


An Impersonal Relationship

by AndraB74



Category: La casa de papel | Money Heist (TV)
Genre: (Just what's in canon), Canon Compliant, Complicated Relationships, Denial of Feelings, F/M, Friends With Benefits, Idiots in Love, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Love/Hate, Lovers to Friends, Power Dynamics, Smut, Terminal Illnesses
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-14
Updated: 2020-09-10
Packaged: 2021-03-06 07:35:04
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 26,494
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25899784
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AndraB74/pseuds/AndraB74
Summary: When Berlin propositions Nairobi two weeks into their stay in Toledo, she rolls her eyes and ignores him. Until one night she caves.It was just sex, Nairobi told herself. They were professionals. She didn't have feelings for Berlin, obviously.
Relationships: Berlin | Andrés de Fonollosa/Nairobi | Ágata Jiménez
Comments: 49
Kudos: 121





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I've been working on this for a while because I think their relationship on the show was fascinating and that there were hidden depths to the way they related to each other. Chapter 1 is definitely the smuttiest (because you know Berlin would put on a show the first time) -- late chapters get more into exploring their relationship emotionally. But be warned -- this will follow canon!

It started two weeks into their stay in Toledo, and there was absolutely nothing romantic about it.

They were filing out of the classroom for lunch, and not for the first time Nairobi could feel Berlin’s eyes on her ass behind her. So she turned around, catching his eyes and raising her eyebrows pointedly.

“Like the view, Berlin?” she asked acerbically.

He smiled his usual cocky smile. “Very much, _se_ _ñorita_ ,” he said. 

Nairobi rolled her eyes, and Berlin brushed past her. But as he did, he leaned down briefly, whispering into her ear.

“Come visit me in the evening sometime.”

Nairobi raised her eyebrows slightly, shaking her head. 

Nairobi had met men like Berlin before. Devoid of feeling, fueled by ego, plastered with charm. She didn’t mind Berlin, not really. Sure, he was a little odd and self-indulgent, and at least once a day he made a gem of a comment that made her wonder how on earth he’d gotten five women to marry him. But she’d met much worse. Still, she wasn’t fool enough to be taken in by his sophisticated tastes and superficial charm; she knew that for all his pretension he was a criminal just like the rest of them.

So she sat next to Tokyo at lunch, and didn’t give much thought to his proposition. She wouldn’t have been at all surprised if the woman sitting next to her got the same one.

But over the next week, she found Berlin’s offer popping back into her head from time to time at odd moments. There was something about the way their eyes occasionally met across the table and held for just a beat too long, neither of them willing to be the one who yielded by looking away. Something about the way he would slide into her personal space as they gathered in the classroom for demonstrations, speaking in a low voice by her ear with commentary for only her to hear. Something about the way he leaned back in his chair with an arrogance that was as enticing as it was irritating.

And then, a week later, Nairobi was lying in bed at night with her fingers down her shorts, and she found her thoughts drifting to Berlin. A passionate kiss, a rough embrace, a firm grip, a hard fuck. Her thoughts took her right up to the edge, but for some reason, she was having trouble finishing herself off. She was craving the real thing too much.

Nairobi sighed, giving up her efforts and falling back onto her mattress. Fuck it. He was right down the hall and she had an open invitation. He was an asshole, obviously, but she couldn’t deny that they had a weird sort of chemistry. It wasn’t like she was going to marry him. And really, if the point of the “no personal relationships” rule was to keep feelings out of the heist, well – she was at no risk of developing feelings for Berlin, and she was pretty sure _he’d_ never had a real feeling in his life.

So she threw on a dressing gown and ran a hand through her hair and slowly opened her bedroom door, being careful not to let it creak. She made her way down the hall to the door she knew was Berlin’s and hesitated briefly.

This was on her terms, she told herself. She just wanted sex. And he was, she suspected, the only man in this house capable of giving her that, and nothing more.

So Nairobi took a deep breath and knocked softly. A minute later, Berlin opened it. His hair was tousled, and he wore a silk dressing gown over a t-shirt. He immediately grinned when he saw her, a knowing grin that made Nairobi want to smack him, and he wordlessly stepped aside for her to enter. She did, and he closed the door behind her.

Nairobi leaned against the closed door. “Not a word,” she said warningly.

He grinned affectionately. “I wouldn’t dream of it, _mi reina_.”

Nairobi looked around the room. His bedside lamp was still on, and a book lay open on the night table. Across from the bed, a desk was littered with books, papers, and sketch pads.

Berlin poured them each a small glass of wine from a decanter on a dusty old table sitting by the window. He held one out to her.

“That’s a Château Margaux,” he told her as she took the glass from him. “Savor it.”

Nairobi looked down at the glass of wine, then back up at Berlin, who was taking a slow sip with his eyes closed. “Mmm,” he hummed appreciatively. “ _Maravilla_ ,” he remarked, looking at the glass.

“Berlin,” Nairobi said impatiently.

He met her eyes, his own expression dancing with amusement. “Yes, Nairobi?”

Nairobi just gave him a plaintive look.

“Words, Nairobi.”

“What’s with the wine?” Nairobi asked in exasperation. “You know why I’m here. Can’t we just…” she gestured at the bed, “be quick about it?”

Berlin smirked, approaching her and sliding a hand around her waist. Nairobi’s breath caught as her body responded to his presence and she was overcome by his touch and his smell.

“Is that what you want, Nairobi?” he murmured. “Just…a quick fuck? That would seem like such a pity when I can give you so much more than that. Tell me, Nairobi, when was the last time a man pleasured you?”

Nairobi met his eyes. “Don’t toy with me, Berlin,” she said, but she was pretty sure her voice lacked conviction.

His face danced. “Your eyes tell me everything, Nairobi. You’re _starving_.”

They just stared at each other for a moment, and Nairobi could have sworn the room heated up several degrees as his eyes bore into hers, an unspoken challenge written in them. But Nairobi wasn’t going to let him control this dance; not that easily, at any rate.

“What are you going to do about that, then?” Nairobi asked him, her lips curling into a smile. “Just... _look_ at me until I come?”

“There will be time for that,” he laughed. “I’m just appreciating a beautiful woman in my arms. Can’t I just take pleasure in the moment, Nairobi?”

Nairobi rolled her eyes. “I don’t have all night, Berlin.”

Berlin grinned. “Where are you going to go?” he asked.

“I’ll leave,” Nairobi told him, arching her brows.

“Oh, will you?” he asked interestedly.

“Don’t try me,” Nairobi said, staring him down.

Berlin laughed, and shook his head as if amused. “Don’t tease me, Nairobi,” he said, tightening his grip around her. “I see how you look at me.” He grinned. “You hate how much you want me, don’t you?”

Nairobi scoffed. “ _You_ invited _me_ here, Berlin,” she reminded him.

“And you came,” he pointed out impishly.

“Not yet, I haven’t,” she said coolly, raising her eyebrows slightly. “We can talk again once I do.”

Berlin laughed again. He released her, took another swig of wine, then set down his empty wine glass and raised a finger as if illuminated. “ _This_ is why I invited you, Nairobi. It’s rare for a man like myself to find an equal in the bedroom, but I sensed you’d be up for the challenge.” He looked her in the eye. “I hope I’m not wrong.”

Nairobi met his gaze, unfazed.

Wordlessly, and without breaking eye contact, he took her wine glass and placed it back down on the dusty table behind him.

Nairobi felt herself heating up as he stepped closer to her again.

His hands came back to her waist and he leaned forward slowly, intentionally, until their foreheads were touching and Nairobi was overwhelmed by the feel of his body against hers. She slowly tilted her chin up, parting her lips, breathing him in.

And then his lips found hers and Nairobi melted into his arms.

The kiss was urgent and hungry, both of them pressing against each other as if this could end at any second. Berlin pushed her against the wall and Nairobi moaned softly as his hands explored her body, squeezing her ass then trailing up her thigh to the space between her legs.

“Don’t stop,” Nairobi gasped.

His hand moved obediently upwards, stroking her teasingly before sliding a finger inside. Nairobi pulled him back into the kiss and leaned back, arching her back as he curled his finger inside her.

He bit her lip and she moaned softly, because she needed this so badly. He slid another finger inside and she dug her nails into his shoulders as her body lit up.

“Fuck,” she cried as her body tensed and spasmed. She surrendered to the pleasure, not caring about anything except how he was making her feel.

She finished quickly – and as her breathing relaxed again, she buried her face in his neck. That had been almost embarrassingly fast. They hadn’t even taken their clothes off. God, she had needed that.

Berlin pulled back. “You really are a quick fuck, Nairobi,” he grinned.

Nairobi shook her head, not willing to give him the pleasure of a compliment. “What’s next?” she asked, cocking her brows in a challenge.

He chuckled. “Why don’t you tell me, _mi reina_ ,” he murmured. “Tell me, what do you want me to do to you?”

Nairobi breathed, hating how much she loved the way he made her weak.

“Do you want me to make you come again?”

“Yes,” Nairobi whispered.

“Did you like it when I made you come, Nairobi?”

“Fuck, Berlin,” Nairobi said as way of response. She kissed him again, and he lifted her by the thighs. He carried her to the bed, but instead of climbing over her he took a step back.

“Undress,” he told her.

Obediently, Nairobi slowly untied her dressing gown and slipped it off her shoulders. Then she slowly pulled her shorts down. She kneeled to face him, in just her camisole and panties. His face was full of hard desire as he watched her.

Nairobi swayed her hips as she slipped her fingers under the hem of her camisole, pulling it up slowly, making a show of it. She smirked as she saw the arousal in his eyes when she revealed her breasts. Then slowly, she brought her hands down to her panties.

“These too?” she asked coyly, teasing him. She brought a finger to her mouth, biting it playfully.

“Those especially,” he growled.

Nairobi laughed. But she pulled them down achingly slowly, inch by inch, making him wait for it for as long as she could drag it out, until they were around her thighs. Then suddenly he was there, between her, ripping them down the rest of the way.

Nairobi laughed again. “Someone is getting impatient,” she teased.

He climbed over her, and she tugged at his dressing gown, until it joined hers on the floor, and his t-shirt along with it. He brought himself down to her entrance and brushed against it, and the sensation made Nairobi gasp.

“Do you have a condom?” she asked.

Berlin laughed. Nairobi gave him a look.

“You’re serious,” he realized.

Nairobi gave him another look.

“Nairobi,” he said with a small laugh, brushing against her again. “I haven’t used a condom with a woman in at least fifteen years. Don’t worry.”

“Berlin,” Nairobi said warningly, closing her legs tightly.

“I won’t finish inside you,” he reassured her. “Unless you want me to, of course,” he smirked.

Nairobi steeled herself. “ _Berlin_ ,” she propped herself up, speaking firmly. “Either you have a condom or you don’t. If you don’t, I do, and I can go get one. My post-heist plans do not involve raising some mini Berlin.”

“But Nairobi,” he said in a low voice, his eyes glinting. He leaned down so that he was speaking directly into her ear. “Don’t you want to feel my skin inside you?”

Nairobi desperately tried to ignore the pang she felt between her legs and looked directly into his eyes. “Berlin.”

“ _Si_ , Nairobi.”

“Do you want to fuck me or not?”

He screwed up his face as if in thought.

Nairobi could kill him.

Then he smiled. “ _Si_ , _mi reina_ ,” he grinned.

Nairobi nodded. “ _Si_?” she confirmed.

“ _Si_ ,” he repeated.

She looked him in the eye. “And do you have a condom?” she asked.

“No, _mi reina_. But if you would go get me one, I will happily suit up.”

“Good,” Nairobi said, and she wriggled out from under him, getting up from the bed and tying her dressing gown around her again.

She returned two minutes later with a small foil packet in hand to find Berlin sprawled naked lazily across the bed.

“You do the honors,” he said.

Nairobi shrugged off her dressing gown and climbed on top of him, sitting on his thighs. She ripped the packet open and rolled the condom onto him. Then she moved forward to lower herself onto him, but before she could, he caught her waist in his hands and flipped them, so that he was hovering over her, pinning her arms down.

“Berlin,” she said, irritated, struggling against his hands.

“Shh,” he told her, grinning. “Be patient, Nairobi.” He leaned down and kissed her neck, while his hands came to her breasts.

Nairobi once again felt herself yielding to him as he touched her, letting herself sink into a world of only sensation. Berlin trailed a hand down her stomach, bringing it to rest between her legs. He began stroking her gently, teasingly, in light circles.

“Mmm….harder,” Nairobi instructed him, frustrated by the lightness of his touch.

“ _Patience_ ,” Berlin repeated. He gave her nipple a light suck before moving his head downwards. And then his head was between her legs, and Nairobi could feel his breath on her.

She let her head fall back in anticipation of the feeling of his tongue, but it didn’t come.

She looked back up, and saw him grinning at her.

“On your word, _mi reina_ ,” he says.

“Go on,” she said impatiently.

Another light breath, and then a flick of the tongue, and then a gentle kiss. And then the kiss intensified, deepened, and Nairobi could feel the pleasure building.

She clutched the sheets as he continued, lapping and sucking, taking her right up to the edge. Her toes started to curl and she shut her eyes in anticipation of the climax…and then he pulled away.

“Don’t stop,” she gasped.

He kissed the inside of her thigh. “I wouldn’t dare,” he said.

And there was a pause, a pause that made her hungry for him. But then his mouth returned, kissing and sucking again, building her back up. His tongue flicked against her, pushing against that delicate spot. And again, Nairobi felt herself close to the edge, when again…he pulled away.

“Fuck, please don’t stop,” she pleaded.

He breathed on her. “I told you, _mi reina_. You must have patience.”

“Please,” she whimpered.

He gave her a light, gentle kiss. But she wanted him to be hard now. His mouth moved slowly, teasing her. But then again, the kisses deepened, and the sucking hastened, and then without warning he slipped two fingers inside her, curling them as he sucked, moving them in pace with his mouth, harder than before, faster, and the pleasure built yet again. Nairobi grabbed his hair, gripping him to keep him from stopping again as she felt herself reaching her peak. But she needn’t have – he kept at it, and Nairobi marveled at how fucking _good_ he was at this. Soon the world faded away as Nairobi felt her insides spasm and her back arch as she reached a long, shaking orgasm.

When it ended, she fell back, breathing raggedly. Berlin came back up, lying next to her, placing a hand on her stomach possessively.

“Good?” he asked, and Nairobi closed her eyes and nodded, because words wouldn’t have done that justice. She was beginning to understand why five women married this fucker.

Then she opened her eyes and met his, and his expression was striking in its softness. It unsettled her, but she couldn’t tear her eyes away. He propped himself up and kissed her again, and she could taste herself on his lips. Nairobi opened her mouth to him for more. Then his arms came around her and pulled her up, flipping them again so that she was on top.

“Ready?” he asked softly.

Nairobi breathed, and nodded.

His hands on her hips guided her down onto him, and her breath caught as she felt him inside her. He let out a soft groan as well. God, she needed this so badly. Nairobi started moving, slow at first, still sensitive from the last orgasm. She rocked her hips steadily, pleasuring herself, letting her head fall back and her eyes shut as she sunk repeatedly onto him.

Berlin’s hips rose in rhythm with her movements, deepening his penetration. Nairobi looked at him and saw that he was watching her intently, his face relaxed and his lips parted. He was beginning to lose his composure and she loved it.

And then she sped up, riding him hard. And soon she was reaching a third orgasm – she rode it out, moving fiercely as a burning sensation took hold of her body, building to a peak that turned into a plateau, making her entire body shake.

When it was over, she collapsed forward onto Berlin, aware that he was still hard inside her, but unable to ride him any further. He tangled his fingers through her hair and kissed her head.

“Good?” he asked again, and again, Nairobi nodded, wordlessly, breathlessly.

He let her sit there for a moment, recovering, and he stroked her hair and kissed her, and when she finally met his eyes, they were again curiously soft.

But soon, he was lifting her off him, getting up off the bed, and positioning her on her hands and knees.

And this time, he didn’t ask if she was ready.

He grabbed her hips and fucked her, hard, and this time it was clearly for him. There was no longer anything gentle or sensual about it; his movements were rough and fast as he took her.

“That’s right,” he said as he thrusted into her. “You’re a very good girl, Nairobi. A very good girl. You did a very good job tonight, I’m very pleased with you.”

Nairobi hated what this was doing for her. But there was something so satisfying about yielding and letting him have her like this. Berlin pulled at her hair and Nairobi bit back a moan. He pulled harder, one hand still on her hip, the other tangling in her hair.

Nairobi brought a finger to herself, rubbing in time with his thrusts, she very soon felt the pleasure so intensely that all she could possibly do was push her hips towards him desperately and rub herself frantically, until her entire body burned and shook and a thrust sent her over the edge with a burst, and she succumbed once more to that fierce burning pleasure, a strained noise escaping her throat.

Berlin didn’t last long after, and he stifled a groan as he let himself go.

They were both still for a moment, shaking. Then he pulled himself out of her and disposed of the used condom in the wastebasket.

And then they collapsed together, their bodies sweaty and their breathing ragged.

Berlin wrapped his arms around her waist and pulled her towards him and laid a gentle kiss on her hair. Nairobi closed her eyes for a moment, reveling in the physical sensations – her sore hips, her slick body, his warm body pressed against hers, the breathing, still both too fast, the sheets, damp from sweat.

Nairobi exhaled, slowly.

Neither of them spoke. Words would require thought, and Nairobi didn’t want to think, she only wanted to feel. So they just laid there like that, tangled in each other, until finally Berlin propped himself up and turned her gently towards him so that their eyes met.

They looked at each other. It was a moment of pure vulnerability between two people who spent most of their lives running from that feeling.

Berlin brought his lips back down to hers and kissed her again, and this time, the kiss was slow and soft. Nairobi opened her mouth to his, and the kiss deepened, as their mouths moved together.

The Berlin pulled back, and his face turned into a grin. “Now, tell me, Nairobi,” he murmured, “and please, be honest with me. My ego can handle it, I promise. Was that the best sex you’ve ever had?”

Nairobi met his eyes, and she hated him for it, she hated him for it with every fiber of her being, but she told him the truth. “Yes,” she breathed.

He looked delighted.

Nairobi didn’t linger – once her breathing recovered, she sat up and got out of the bed and found her discarded dressing gown, pulling it back over her, and then she tucked her balled up clothes under her arm.

“You don’t have to leave, you know,” Berlin told her.

Nairobi glanced at him, considering the offer. But the moment had ended. He was still a colleague, still her captain, still a bit of an asshole, and she didn’t need herself getting confused by the feeling of his arms around her as she slept. She shook her head. “I’m not sleeping with you,” she told him.

He shrugged. “Suit yourself.”

As she was about to leave, Nairobi met his eyes across the room.

“We don’t talk about this,” she said, and she wasn’t sure whether it was a question or a command, but either way, he nodded.

“I trust your discretion,” he said.

She nodded as well.

“Good-night, Berlin.”

“Good-night, Nairobi.”


	2. Chapter 2

True to his word, Berlin didn’t talk about it. Neither did Nairobi. He still stared at her ass sometimes, but it would have been strange if he hadn’t. Their eyes still met across the table sometimes and flickered suggestively, but that had been happening before as well. Nairobi still made eyes at the Professor during class, because he was a fox, and because he got so adorably flustered when she did. Berlin still made suggestive comments to Tokyo, because he was still a chauvinistic asshole. If there were any outward signs that something had happened between them, none of the others seemed to notice. Thank god for that.

But two days after that first night, when Nairobi was having trouble falling asleep, she went back to Berlin’s room. He had clearly already been sleeping, but he didn’t seem to mind being woken. He pulled her onto his lap and they fucked like there was no tomorrow.

Three days after that was the same. And then again the day after that. And then it didn’t stop.

There was something about the thrill of it being forbidden that seemed to make it even more fun. Not that it needed additional thrill to be worthwhile – while Berlin didn’t usually put on quite as much of a show as he had that first night, he was still _very_ good at what he did. Their sex continued to be punctuated by teasing as they challenged each other and competed for control. Nairobi loved making him work for it, and she knew he loved being kept on his toes.

Of course, Nairobi didn’t have feelings for Berlin, obviously. Sure, he was giving her some of the best sex of her entire life, but he was still an uptight psycho. An uptight psycho with a voice that made her panties wet and a gaze that made her feel thrown open like a book, but an uptight psycho nonetheless. And sure, sometimes when they finished, if it wasn’t too late, Nairobi would stay for a glass of wine or a cigarette, and they’d sit together quietly. They’d talk, sometimes, in low voices – about their teammates, or their time in prison, or places they’d like to travel to, or anything really – anything except for their feelings.

And except for personal questions. Oddly, they both, without ever discussing it, stuck to that rule. Berlin never asked about her c-section scar. Nairobi never asked about the bruising she sometimes noticed on his left forearm. If he was a junkie, he was a functional one. He’d never been observably high – he was always sharp in class; he was the best of all of them when it came to the Professor’s regular little pop quizzes. As long as it wasn’t interfering with the heist, his secrets were his own. He was an adult, free to shoot up every few days if that’s what made him happy.

But lately, Berlin had taken to toying with her outside of the bedroom as well, and it was driving her mad. Getting her all hot when she was wrapped around him at night was one thing; doing it during their mid-morning break when Helsinki was standing five feet away from them was another thing. She knew he was just doing this for his own ego, because he took pleasure in seeing how flustered he could make her, but it was fucking distracting, not to mention that it made them risk the others noticing something going on. Nairobi started snapping at him whenever he came up behind her, gritting her teeth at the way this only made him grin.

So when she noticed that she and Berlin would be on lunch duty together one Thursday afternoon in mid-July, Nairobi groaned. This was going to be unbearable.

Lunch was always the largest meal of the day, and the Professor shifted responsibility for cooking on a rotating schedule so that they were always paired with someone different. Whenever the weather allowed, they ate outside, breaking from class in early afternoon to start the food and get in some target practice, then sitting down for a long leisurely lunch together than often ambled on until late afternoon.

Nairobi and Berlin were among the best cooks on the team, rivaled only by Moscow, who’s traditional Andalusian meals were always mouth-watering. The Professor was good when he followed a recipe, but had no natural sense of how ingredients worked. Helsinki and Oslo could barbeque meat reasonably well, but lacked talent beyond that. Denver was a surprisingly decent cook – Nairobi supposed he’d learned from Moscow – but his preparations lacked finesse. And Tokyo and Rio were, god bless them, completely useless.

But Nairobi had once managed a prison kitchen, and there was nothing like feeding five hundred angry criminals using a pin-sized budget to teach you how to scrape flavor out of nothing. And Berlin? Who knew with that man. He always cooked something elaborate, usually Italian or French, narrating the process as if he’d fucking invented food.

So on Thursday, Nairobi wandered down to the kitchen and found Berlin holding an apron out for her.

“Nairobi,” he greeted her. “Put this on, we’re making paella.”

Nairobi groaned but tied the apron on obediently. Paella was delicious, of course, but it required so much chopping and so long to cook, and between the oppressive July weather and the heat from the stove, the kitchen was already almost unbearably warm. Nairobi fanned herself with a dishtowel, wondering how Berlin was surviving in a shirt and tie when she was melting in a lightweight dress.

Berlin gestured at several bell peppers on the table in the center of the kitchen. “Start chopping,” he said.

Nairobi picked up a pepper and a knife and sliced into it, beginning to cut it into pieces. For several minutes, they both worked in silence, as she chopped while he prepared the mussels and deveined the shrimp.

Nairobi didn’t mind silence with Berlin. It was one of the handful of things she actually liked about him – that they were able to sit or work in silence together, both focused on what they were doing or absorbed in their own thoughts, and somehow it felt knowing and companionable, not uncomfortable. At times, it even seemed like they had a strange sixth sense about what the other needed or was looking for, as happened today when Berlin turned and set a bag of onions in front of her just as she was finishing chopping the last pepper.

As she chopped the onions, though, Nairobi quickly felt her eyes start to sting and tear up. She wiped her eyes, stepping backwards for a moment and bumping into Berlin.

He caught her before she lost her balance and with lightening reflexes grabbed her wrist to prevent her hand – which still contained the large chopping knife – from instinctively flailing.

And then Nairobi felt very conscious of the fact that Berlin was holding her in his arms.

“Careful there,” he murmured, steadying her. His hand lingered on her back as he leaned over her. “Don’t worry,” he whispered. “I’ve got you.”

Nairobi was, by this point, used to the feeling of her body against hers. But that didn’t mean that it didn’t still affect her. She felt her temperature rising and quickly shrugged him away. “I’m fine, Berlin,” she said tersely.

He grinned, obviously aware that he was having an effect on her, and released her, returning to the shellfish.

But then a minute later, she felt his eyes on her as she chopped. “You’re going to amputate a finger if you keep cutting them like that,” he informed her.

Nairobi looked down at the onion she was chopping and resisted the urge to snap at him. “How would you do it then?” she asked, looking at him.

He came over, and before Nairobi could move aside to let him demonstrate, she felt his presence at her back, his breath by her ear. He reached forward and repositioned the onion, brushing her arm as he did, and Nairobi desperately tried to ignore the spark it sent through her body. “Cut it across the middle first so you can lay it flat,” he instructed her softly, his arms wrapped around her as he worked. “Then cut like this,” he demonstrated, delicately repositioning her hands. “Knuckles out, never fingers.”

Nairobi shivered, having difficulty concentrating on anything he was saying when she could feel his body pressed against hers. “Berlin,” she said, turning and meeting his eyes. “Stop it, ay?

“Stop what?” he asked innocently, smiling at her.

“Stop doing that thing you’re doing. Stop _charming_ me.”

His face broke into a giant smile. “Am I charming you, Nairobi?” he asked affectionately, leaning in close to her. He trailed a hand down her side. “Is this…making you uncomfortable?”

Nairobi pushed him away. “I said to stop it,” she said, shaking her knife in his direction. “Don’t do this here when we’re working.” She shook her head. “You’re such an asshole,” she said, but her lips twitched as she said it.

He laughed, and Nairobi went back to chopping, trying to focus intently on cutting the onion properly in order to take her mind off of – well, off of how much she wanted Berlin to envelop her in a passionate kiss, embrace her roughly, push her onto the counter, hike up her dress, and –

 _Onions_ , she reminded herself.

She hated giving him the pleasure of flustering her. But what were they going to do, fuck right there in the kitchen? This was torture, and he knew it. He was clearly doing this for his own amusement, deliberately toying with her just to satisfy his ego because he was cool as a cucumber while she was all hot and bothered.

So as she finished the onions and moved on to the garlic, she had an idea.

She turned to Berlin, who was now slicing chorizo, and said sweetly, “Berlin, we should play some music, no?”

He looked over at her. “A fantastic idea, Nairobi,” he agreed.

Nairobi crossed the room to the old, dusty stereo that rested on a table in the corner. It was at least twenty years old, maybe thirty, and a handful of worn cassette tapes surrounded it. She spent a minute examining them before finally choosing one to insert into the player. And then, with a pop and a push, music started wafting from the stereo. It was notes of a romantic guitar song, soft and sultry.

Nairobi turned and caught his eye, running a hand slowly through her hair and biting her lips to moisten them. She swung her hips lightly as she sauntered up to him where he was working with the meat, making her thin red dress sway against her. She forced herself not to smirk at the way his eyes lingered.

She touched his arm lightly, looking up at him seductively. “I just love guitar music, don’t you?” she breathed, trailing her hand down his arm.

He met her eyes, smiling knowingly. “I do enjoy guitar music, Nairobi,” he told her, settling a hand on her waist. “It’s one of the finest of Spanish arts; a truly enchanting piece of cultural heritage. And you’ve selected a very…beautiful composition for us to listen to while we cook,” he said, and his smile curled upwards, obviously aware of what she was doing.

Nairobi fingered his tie, looking up at him through her eyelashes. “I thought maybe…the cooking could wait for a few minutes,” she suggested softly. “Do you dance, Berlin?” she asked, making her eyes big, and brushing her hip intentionally against him. “I just love to dance.”

He watched her, his eyes dancing. “There’s nothing I love more.”

Nairobi took his hand and led him into the open part of the kitchen, not taking her eyes off his. He then pulled her towards him hungrily, placing one hand on her waist and taking her hand in the other.

“Mmmm,” Nairobi hummed sensually, swaying her body with the music. She was deliberately rocking her body into his, pressing herself into him. She looked up at him, meeting his eyes with a burning gaze, and gave her hips a quick flick in time with the music.

She watched his eyes close briefly at the sensation, and knew she had him.

They continued dancing, the sultry music a perfect backdrop. During a swell in the music, Nairobi turned in his arms, placing his hands on her hips and leaning her head back onto his shoulder. They swayed together, and he caressed her as she moved her hips.

“Is it me?” she asked eventually, “or is it…a bit warm in here?”

“Mm,” Berlin murmured into her ear. “I think you’ve managed to warm the both us, _mi reina_.”

“Ah, si?” Nairobi asked, a smile playing on her lips.

“Si,” he purred.

“You like dancing with me?” she asked coyly.

He inhaled deeply. “I could dance with you for hours, _mi reina_.”

“Mm,” Nairobi breathed. She pressed her body against his and moved her hips slowly. She heard his breath catch and continued the movement, grinding into him, until she could feel him growing against her.

Then she turned and looked up at him innocently.

“Ah, it looks like you’ve awakened something, _mi reina_ ,” he observed.

Then Nairobi smirked and pulled away from him, dropping the act. “Have fun with that,” she laughed. She returned to her cutting board, shaking her head, and continued mincing garlic, feeling quite pleased with herself. “Don’t neglect your broth, _cari_ _ño_ ,” she told him, gesturing towards the stove. “It’s boiling.”

Berlin chuckled and shook his head. He returned to the stove and lowered the heat on the broth, but then he came back up behind her. A hand came to her hip, and another hand came to her hair, which he swept aside. “Don’t be a tease, Nairobi,” he whispered, speaking softly into her ear. Then he pressed his erection against her ass. Nairobi leaned her head back and let out a soft moan, filling with desire and anticipation as she realized that her plan had completely backfired, and that they were about to fuck right there in the kitchen.

“Condom,” she breathed.

“Way ahead of you, _mi reina_ ,” he whispered, and she heard a crinkling noise as he opened the condom packet. Nairobi couldn’t help but roll her eyes. The fucker had really come prepared with a condom in his pocket? Was she that predictable?

Then he pulled her panties down and brought a hand to her ass, grabbing it greedily. He gave it a playful smack before trailing his hand down between her legs.

“So wet for me, Nairobi,” he murmured, stroking her.

Then, without preamble, he pushed inside her.

Nairobi gasped, bending over the counter as he thrusted into her, the sensation hitting her exactly where she needed it to. She pressed into the cool granite counter, moving herself to meet him, both of their movements rapid and frantic. Berlin leaned over her, his hands under her dress. One hand came down to her clit to play with her while he thrusted, and Nairobi had to bite her lip hard to keep a loud moan from escaping.

“Please don’t stop,” she whimpered desperately. “Fuck, Berlin, please don’t stop.”

But then he stopped. Hastily he pulled her dress down and turned away, and Nairobi was about to protest when the kitchen door swung open and Moscow entered. Nairobi hurriedly went back to mincing garlic, while Berlin washed his hands and then returned to the meat preparation.

Moscow got a beer from the fridge, asking if they’d each like one as well. Nairobi said yes, thinking that a cold beer sounded like a phenomenal idea right about now, and Berlin agreed. Moscow got them each a beer, then, to Nairobi’s immense frustration, pulled a stool up to the counter and sat and started talking to them about paella recipes. And if he had any idea that they had just been fucking – which Nairobi privately thought he somehow did – he didn’t show it.

So they made polite chit-chat with Moscow for the next hour as they cooked, keeping their hands to themselves. Trying to stave off her frustration, Nairobi ordered Berlin around the kitchen. He teased her uncooperatively, such that by the time the rice was in the large pan, Nairobi was ready to strangle him. 

For Berlin’s part, he seemed completely unaffected by their interruption, and kept going off on flowery narratives about the ingredients they were using, thrusting herbs under Nairobi’s nose and insisting that she stop and smell them.

“People are hungry, Berlin,” Nairobi reminded him when he did this for a third time, sticking a container of fresh saffron in her face.

“You must have too much pleasure in your life already if you’re not interested in enjoying this,” Berlin responded, grinning widely.

Nairobi gave him a look and ignored him.

Eventually they were joined by Denver as well, and then by Helsinki and Oslo, who volunteered to make the sangria. By the time the paella was ready, it was almost mid-afternoon, and the others cheered as they brought the teaming pan of rice and seafood out to the table.

As they ate, the Professor reviewed the plan for the transport takeover on the first day of the heist, reminding everyone of their roles and quizzing them on the precise timing to be followed. Nairobi tried to pay attention, but kept finding her eyes flickering back to Berlin’s. Their unfinished business was driving her crazy. Nairobi felt like she was about to burst from her desperate need to feel him inside her again.

Then, after an hour or so of sitting around the table, Berlin stood up. “I’m going to have to excuse myself briefly to take care of a personal matter. I’ll see you all back in class.”

He met Nairobi’s eyes for a brief moment. Her heart leaped with gratitude as she understood what he was suggesting.

She watched him walk towards the house, desperately trying to figure out how to follow him up there as soon as possible without calling suspicion to herself.

In the name of subtlety, she allowed ten minutes to go by, listening as the group laughed as they discussed what items they’d be taking with them into the mint. Nairobi threw in enough of her own commentary to make sure no one suspected her distraction, but in the back of her head she was counting down the seconds.

Then, finally, Nairobi stood. “I need to go take an ibuprofen,” she said.

“Are you okay?” the Professor asked her, clearly concerned.

Nairobi waved a hand. “I’m fine,” she reassured him. “I just have bad cramps,” she lied, placing a hand over her lower abdomen.

They accepted this, and Nairobi headed back into the house, forcing herself not to run as she headed upstairs.

She reached Berlin’s door and knocked, but was too impatient to wait for a response – she pushed it open immediately.

To her surprise, he was sitting at his desk, and hid something quickly as she walked in. Nairobi raised her eyebrows. Had he actually excused himself to take care of a personal matter?

Nairobi decided that she didn’t care. She walked up behind where he was sitting, placing her hands on his chest and leaning down so that she was speaking into his ear.

“Berlin,” she breathed.

“Yes, _mi reina_?” he murmured.

“I need you to fuck me right now.”

And Berlin stood and pulled her towards him, turning her in his arms, caressing her. He kissed her neck as his hands explored her hungrily. And then he pushed her against the wall, pulled her panties back down, opened his trousers, rolled a condom on, and fucked her.

And this time, they both finished.

By the time they rejoined class for their afternoon session, Nairobi was in a considerably better mood, having a hard time keeping a dreamy, satisfied smile off her face.


	3. Chapter 3

And so it continued. Nairobi visited Berlin’s room every few nights, and they took pleasure from each other’s bodies. He gripped her ass as she ground into his lap. She wrapped her legs around him as he thrusted into her, kissing her neck. It was intense, passionate, and wonderfully physical.

Most nights, Berlin led the dance – he liked being in control, and clearly loved making her weak for him. He would flip her over, pin her down, toy with her mercilessly in a way that drove her absolutely crazy. But Nairobi always made sure everything happened on her terms. She decided when she wanted to see him. She held firm about making sure they used protection. And she was always clear with him about what she liked and when he was becoming insufferable. If anything, Berlin seemed to enjoy when she asserted herself against him. He seemed to find it oddly charming.

He had an odd charm himself. Not the one he put on – Nairobi could see right through his pretentious affect and cocky smiles. But there was something almost endearing about the way he walked through the world oblivious to his own vulnerability, strangely determined to see only the bright side of things.

Not that Nairobi was developing feelings for Berlin, obviously.

Sure, their post-sex embraces had at some point gotten longer – he would wrap an arm around her, and she would bury her face in his neck, breathing in his smell, relishing the feeling of his skin. And sure, sometimes as they sat together, sharing a cigarette, Nairobi would lean against him, and he would stroke her hair absently. And sure, sometimes they laughed together – Berlin was an asshole, but he had a brand of cocky humor that somehow worked.

But this wasn’t a love story. They were professionals. It wasn’t personal; it was just sex. They knew nothing about each other aside from their criminal resumes and their mutual dedication to printing 2.4 billion euros.

Then one night, after a particularly drawn-out, mind-numbing orgasm, Nairobi closed her eyes in satisfied bliss and accidentally drifted to sleep in Berlin’s arms.

She awoke to his alarm the next morning, sunshine streaming in the window. Her head was on his arm and his body was at her back. Nairobi sat upright, feeling panic rising in her.

"Fuck, fuck, fuck," she said, getting out of the bed hastily and gathering her clothes from the floor. 

Berlin looked at her, bleary-eyed, and the confusion in his eyes was obvious. "What's wrong?" he asked.

"This wasn't supposed to happen," Nairobi said desperately, uncomfortable with how easily and naturally her body had relaxed into his during the night.

"Why?" he asked, and it was clear that he genuinely didn't understand. Somehow that made it much worse.

"Because that's not what this is, Berlin," she said, trying to convince herself as much as him.

He just looked at her and shrugged, clearly unaffected. 

Nairobi felt an uncomfortable tightness rising in her chest, and hastily left the room before he could see the tears welling in her eyes.

As she sat on the edge of her own bed, safe in the privacy of her room, Nairobi was finally forced to confront the fact that things were changing. Maybe not for him: Berlin was still the same charming egomaniac he’d always been. But Nairobi’s chest tightened as she realized that nearly three months of lying naked next to him was starting to take its natural toll on her. She was feeling things. She ached for the familiarity of his arms, the softness of his gaze, the way he stroked her hair tenderly when he held her.

Nairobi closed her eyes tightly to contain her tears and put her head in her hands. Fuck.

**

For the next four days, Nairobi avoided Berlin. She didn’t chat with him during their mid-morning break. She didn’t make eye contact with him over lunch. She didn’t go to his room at night. There was a reason they’d all agreed to no personal relationships – it was safer, cleaner. Her relationship with Berlin wasn’t exactly personal – it had always just been about sex – but Nairobi was starting to get attached, and she didn’t like it.

If he sensed that she was avoiding him, he didn’t say anything. Nairobi supposed he didn’t care very much one way or the other. This just made it worse.

So for four days, they barely spoke. Nairobi stayed up late playing poker with Tokyo, Rio, and Helsinki and tried to ignore the urge she had to run into Berlin’s arms afterward. _No personal relationships_ , she reminded herself. No feelings.

Then one afternoon, as they were leaving the classroom, Berlin caught her elbow, holding her back.

Nairobi waited for the others to leave, then turned to him. His face was calm, inscrutable.

“Nairobi,” he said. “I need you to forge a prescription and an ID card to go with it.” His tone was business-like, formal.

Nairobi nodded, burying her feelings for the moment. “No problem,” she said. “What’s the prescription?”

He handed her a slip of paper, and Nairobi read it curiously. _Retroxil, 2mL IV q.d. QTY: 90._

Nairobi looked up at him, but she couldn’t find a single emotion in his face. “What is this?” she asked.

“Don’t worry about it,” Berlin said evenly.

Nairobi looked back at the prescription and sighed. “It’ll take a few days,” she told him, slipping the piece of paper into her jeans. “I’ll need to get the right kind of paper and the material for the ID.”

“Thank you, Nairobi,” he said.

Nairobi looked at him curiously. “Does the Professor know about this?” she asked him tentatively.

“Yes,” he said curtly.

Nairobi studied his face. His jaw was tense, his eyes cold. She shivered. Clearly whatever this was, it was something he didn’t want to discuss. So she nodded at him again, and turned away.

**

Two days later, Nairobi sat at the Professor’s computer in the dusty living room, a cigarette between her lips as she carefully traced around a real doctor’s signature in photoshop, tearing it from the authentic document and pasting it onto the one she was creating. She zoomed in to check the resolution.

Then her eyes flitted back to the paper Berlin had handed her, which rested on the table next to her.

_Retroxil, 2mL IV q.d. QTY: 90._

Nairobi had forged enough prescriptions in her life to know the lingo. Morphine, tranquilizers, sedatives, sleeping pills. IV meant intravenous, q.d. meant once a day, QTY: 90 meant this was a 90-day-supply.

But she had never heard of Retroxil.

Her curiosity getting the best of her, she flicked open a web browser and searched “Retroxil.” Her eyes scanned the results, and she clicked into one of the first suggested pages, a medical reference site.

 **_“Retroxil_ ** _is a corticosteroid used to treat certain rare muscular dystrophies, most notably Helmer’s Myopathy. Retroxil decreases the body's natural defensive response and reduces symptoms such as swelling and allergic-type reactions. This medication is given by injection into a vein, muscle, joint, or skin wound as directed by your doctor.”_

Rare muscular dystrophies? Nairobi continued scanning the page, looking for the kinds of pleasurable or pain-numbing side effects that typically drew people to prescription drug abuse. Finding none, she was forced to consider that Berlin might need this drug for legitimate medical purposes. Somehow that was much worse.

Her heart beginning to beat faster, she scrolled back to the top of the page and clicked the link to Helmer’s Myopathy.

 **_“Helmer’s Myopathy_ ** _is a genetic degenerative muscular dystrophy affecting approximately 1 in 100,000 individuals. It can be treated using intravenous decasone solution (see: Retroxil), however in 90% of cases the diagnosis is terminal. Life expectancy at the time of diagnosis is 14 to 24 months.”_

Nairobi stared at the screen as this sunk in. Fourteen to twenty-four months? Suddenly she felt light-headed, and she leaned back, closing her eyes and focusing on her breathing.

So he was dying.

Suddenly, everything made sense. The way he savored his wine. The way he insisted on stopping to smell the herbs they cooked with. The way he fucked every time as if it could be his last.

Nairobi put her head in her hands as tears prickled into her eyes. She wasn’t sure whether she was crying for him, or crying for her, or crying for them. Not that there was a “them.” But she liked to think she knew him better than the others, that she’d seen a softer side of him that most of them didn’t know existed. She thought back to the bruises on his arm, the “personal matters,” the way she’d once noticed his hand shaking before he deftly slid it under a pillow. She should have put it all together.

As Nairobi gathered herself and forced herself to exit the browser and return to photoshop, her mind kept flickering back to Berlin, replaying every moment of theirs in her head in light of this secret he’d been carrying. Beneath all of that charm and bullshit, he must be terrified. 

**

She pulled Berlin aside later that afternoon, as the others were leaving the classroom to go have an evening coffee.

He looked at her expectantly.

Nairobi held up the thin prescription form and the ID she’d created, both under the name “Pedro Vazquez.” He reached for it, but she pulled it away, staring him down.

“Were you going to tell us?” she asked him.

He closed his eyes lightly. “You looked it up,” he surmised.

“Did you think I wouldn’t?” she asked him heatedly.

He sighed. “No, I suspected you would.”

“How long do you have?” Nairobi demanded.

Berlin tensed. “Six months. Maybe more, maybe less.”

“ _Six months_?” Nairobi repeated, feeling desperation creeping back into her voice as that tightness in her chest returned. “And maybe _less_? What do you mean, ‘maybe less’? Could you die before the heist?”

He turned away from her. “Any of us could die at any point, Nairobi,” he said, his voice calm. “You could have an aneurysm tomorrow, or be in a fatal car crash on your way back from the grocer. I prefer not to change the way I live because of that.”

Nairobi slammed a desk in frustration, because this _mattered_. “Berlin! Does the Professor know?”

“Yes,” was all he said.

“ _Berlin!_ ” she said again, feeling tears welling in her eyes.

He turned back towards her. His eyes flickered briefly, a microexpression that would have been easy to miss, but one that plainly betrayed fear. “What do you want, Nairobi?” he asked, his voice dull and cold.

Nairobi just looked at him, trying desperately not to break down in tears, because she shouldn’t be crying over him, and because she had no idea how to answer his question.

“You’ve been avoiding me this week,” he observed. He took a step towards her, so that they were less than a foot apart. “Why?”

“I haven’t been avoiding you,” Nairobi lied, crossing her arms. “I’ve been busy.”

“Mm-hm.”

“I’ve been busy, Berlin.”

“You mentioned.”

His hand came to her cheek, brushing it gently, and his other hand slid around her waist. He met her eyes, and there was that softness in them, that softness that she craved, that softness that made her _feel_ things, and she felt a visceral pang in her chest.

Nairobi shivered. “Stop that,” she said, jerking away from him.

“Why?” he asked softly, maintaining his grip on her waist.

“Because you’re fucking dying,” Nairobi snapped.

His eyes flashed for a moment, and his grip around her tightened in a way that sent chills down her spine. But then he quickly seemed to recompose himself, and after a moment, he laughed.

“You’re developing feelings for me,” he observed, a grin creeping over his face.

“No,” Nairobi lied again, impatiently, pushing his arm off of her waist. “Fuck you, I don’t have feelings for you, Berlin; you’re an asshole. I’m just worried about the heist.”

He seemed to be examining her. “I’m a very good lie detector, Nairobi. And you’re a very bad liar.”

Nairobi felt her irritation growing. “Don’t make this about me, Berlin.”

“Are you telling me those tears in your eyes are just because you’re worried about the heist, then?” he asked her with a small laugh.

Nairobi blinked back the tears, swallowing. “Stop it,” she told him.

“It’s okay, Nairobi. Your feelings are natural. It’s not a weakness, you don’t need to deny them.” He met her eyes again and for a moment they just held the gaze. In that instant, it felt like a million things passed between them, and the force of it made Nairobi feel like her heart was about to burst.

But it hurt too much. She couldn’t do it.

“I could never have feelings for a piece of shit like you,” she told him coldly.

His gaze hardened.

“You keep telling me how I feel,” Nairobi snapped. “What about how you feel, Berlin? Do you want to talk about that?”

“What, do you think I’ve been pining for you?” Berlin asked. His voice was measured, but his eyes glinted with scorn. “Have you been hoping that I’ve been waiting around like a sad puppy, desperate for you to come to me?”

Nairobi gave him a disdainful look. “No, because that would mean you were a human being with human feelings, Berlin,” she said coldly. “I know you well enough to know you don’t have those.”

Berlin glared at her, his lips curling in anger.

Nairobi plowed ahead, going for the jugular. “You’d think dying might bring out the best in a man,” she said coolly, arching her brows. “But you’re so afraid of anyone seeing you weak that you’d rather mock me than talk to me about the fact that you’re dying and you’re _scared_.”

His jaw clenched. He took a step forward, so that he was close to her, leaning over her, but it was clear that it was meant to intimidate, not arouse. “Say one more word about my condition,” he said, “and you’re off this team.”

Nairobi laughed bitterly. He wouldn’t dare. She decided to call his bluff. “You just hate that someone saw you vulnerable,” she told him scathingly. “You hate that I found out your secret. Because you can’t stand being pitied. And I do. I pity you, Berlin.”

They stared at each other for a moment. Nairobi burned with frustration, and Berlin’s eyes lashed with anger that was plainly hiding fear. 

Then, because she didn’t know what else to do, Nairobi kissed him.

Their kisses had often been intense and passionate, but this one had a roughness to it that was unlike anything before. Berlin pushed her onto the desk, gripping her head, tugging roughly at her hair. Nairobi dug her nails into his back, pulling him towards her needily.

Their mouths moved against each other’s, hot and wet and intense. Teeth met lips, lips met necks, hands squeezed and grabbed and pushed and pulled.

Nairobi moaned as his hand settled around the back of her neck, gripping her like iron. Wordlessly, he grabbed her by the shirt and flipped her over, pushing her down against the Professor’s desk.

“Berlin,” she gasped, as her head met the desk.

He unbuttoned her jeans and pulled then down roughly. His hand came to her bare ass for a moment, but then it left and came back with a smack.

Nairobi startled, wincing at the pain this caused. Then she shut her eyes, because she needed this. She needed to feel anything other than what she was currently feeling. “Harder,” she said.

His hand connected with her ass again, with more force, and it smarted. And then again. And again. And again.

Nairobi’s eyes welled with tears. “Don’t stop,” she managed.

He kept going, he kept going until her bottom was burning. And then, without warning, he pushed himself into her roughly, and Nairobi cried out, because it stung.

He began thrusting into her, hard. Nairobi had a fleeting realization that he hadn’t put a condom on. But she didn’t tell him to stop. She needed this at least as much as he did.

His hands closed over her throat as he pushed into her, and Nairobi wasn’t sure whether the sensations were pleasurable, but they were certainly intense enough to be all-consuming, and that’s what she needed right now. She felt herself growing with need, need to reach that point of escape from everything in the world.

“Is this what you always wanted from me, Nairobi?” Berlin murmured, and the softness in his voice was a strange contrast to the roughness of his movements. “To be…completely at my mercy?” He tightened his grip around her throat and Nairobi could barely breathe anymore. He groaned lightly.

He sped up, pushing her roughly against the desk, and then his movements began to jerk. And then, with a particularly hard jerk, he groaned, shooting himself inside her. As his hands came away from her throat, Nairobi gasped for air, coughing and collapsing forward onto the desk.

Berlin removed himself from inside her and turned away, recomposing himself. Nairobi stood back up, not knowing what to say. She was still hot between her legs, but for some reason she felt too uneasy to bring it up. So she slowly pulled her jeans back on.

As she buttoned them, she raised her eyes and met his. His eyes were strangely cold. He nodded at her, picked up the prescription and ID card that Nairobi had abandoned on the desk, and wordlessly left the classroom.

And Nairobi slowly sunk to the floor and finally let the sob escape. The tears came quickly, thick and hot, and her body shook as she cried. Because everything about that had felt wrong, and because he was dying, and because all of those feelings she’d spent months denying were suddenly overpowering her, and because he clearly felt nothing, and because the worst part was that she still craved him, still wanted to feel him inside her.

Nairobi sighed, burying her face in her knees. This had been a really bad idea.

**

That night, Nairobi knocked on Berlin’s door the same way she had done for months. When he opened it, he looked surprised.

“You want more already?” he asked.

Nairobi entered the room and shut the door. She shook her head. “I can’t do this anymore,” she told him.

He stared at her for a moment. “Okay,” he said.

Nairobi hated how easy it was for him. As if they hadn’t spent the past three months tangled up in each other, looking into each other’s eyes, laughing together.

“That’s it?” she asked him.

“What, do you want me to try to change your mind?” he asked mockingly.

“I just want you to care at least a little!” she snapped.

His face seemed to harden. “This was just a bit of fun, Nairobi. If you’re not having fun anymore, then you’re free to go.”

They stared at each other for several seconds.

“Are you going to go?” Berlin asked her, his voice cold.

Nairobi stared at him. She didn’t want to go. She wanted him to take her in his arms and kiss her hair and laugh and tell her that the whole Retroxil thing was just an elaborate prank, and then she could go back to being playfully annoyed by him and he could go back to grinning maddeningly, and they could fall onto the bed together and he’d kiss her softly and she’d smile because she liked it more than she wanted to admit.

But she didn’t say that. She couldn’t. So she just turned, and she left.


	4. Chapter 4

For the next month, Nairobi didn’t go to see Berlin at all. 

She tore herself away from that chapter of her time in this house. It was fine, she told herself. She was fine. It hadn’t ever been more than sex anyway. 

They still spoke, of course: they exchanged words over lunch, shared hostage study notes, discussed the shift schedule for the currency printing in the mint. He still had a habit of making her coffee in the morning, something he’d started doing because she so frequently slept in until the last possible moment before class. She still had a sixth sense for when he was about to snap at someone, and a knack for pulling him aside before he did and giving him a warning look. 

But it was nothing more than that. They were colleagues; that was all. 

So instead, she laughed with Tokyo, staying up and blasting music and trading stories. She danced with Denver, teasing him about how handsome his baby blue eyes were. She smoked with Helsinki, swapping prison stories with a natural ease between them. She flirted with the Professor, smiling coyly at him from the back of the classroom and approaching him after lessons to ask him “questions” that invariably made him flush. She didn’t need Berlin. 

Two weeks after the last time she’d had sex with Berlin, Nairobi took a pregnancy test. Her heart pounded nervously as she checked the little white strip. Negative. 

Nairobi sighed with relief. 

Her body still ached for him; her mind still wandered to him at night. She would find herself staring at him in class, imagining climbing into his lap, lowering herself onto him while he gripped her ass and they moved together. Then she would shake herself out of it and turn back to the lesson. 

She began looking for a distraction, something to take her mind off him. They say the best way to get over someone is to get under someone else, no? So when she, Tokyo, Rio, and Denver snuck out to a festival one night and a man who introduced himself as Marcos offered to buy her a drink, she accepted. And then when he asked if she wanted to get out of there, she told him she thought he’d never ask. He took her to his flat and they fucked on his couch, and then Nairobi let herself fall asleep next to him, because she knew it wouldn’t matter anyway. She took a cab back to the house at dawn, sneaking in like a teenager. 

But it wasn’t enough. She was still thinking about Berlin. 

So she doubled down on her efforts with the Professor. He was the kind of man she _should_ be with, she reasoned. So different from all the men in her past – he was a man with a heart, a man with principles, a man who respected women. Why did she never end up with a man like _that_? Perhaps it was desperation that made her believe that she could break down his sweet, nerdy walls and find the intimacy she craved with another man. She faked a fever as a ploy to get him into her bedroom, hoping that once he was there he wouldn’t be able to resist any longer. But he stuck to his rules stubbornly. Nairobi sighed. Maybe that was for the best. 

Occasionally she and Berlin still made eye contact across the table, and every time it happened, Nairobi felt it like a jolt. She would look away immediately. 

Not for the first time, Nairobi cursed her abysmal taste in men. 

** 

On September 16th, Nairobi woke up to sun streaming into her room and a light breeze wafting in through the open window. In her sleepy haze, she smiled at the beauty of the morning, feeling optimistic about the day ahead. Then she remembered the date, and she sunk back into her pillow, a weight falling over her body. On second thought, maybe she could just stay here all day. She could fake another fever and just lie in bed watching movies on her phone. She didn’t want to talk to anyone today. 

She closed her eyes and a little boy’s smile emerged immediately in her mind. “ _Mami_!” he cried happily. “Look at me!” 

Nairobi swallowed. 

He’d be eight today. She tried to imagine what he’d look like as an eight-year-old. Would his hair still be soft and downy, or would it have gotten curly like his father’s? Would he have lost teeth? Did he have friends in school? Did he like football or reading or art? 

_Six weeks_ , Nairobi told herself. In six weeks, this heist would be over, and she’d be with him again. She’d give him the life she’d never had growing up, a life with everything he could ever want. They’d buy a big house in Argentina or Chile, and she’d put him in one of those fancy private schools where the kids wore uniforms with shields on them, and when he grew up he could be a surgeon, or a politician, or whatever he wanted to be. He’d have everything. And he’d always know how much his mother loved him. 

She clung to this thought as she finally forced herself to get out of bed and get dressed. 

She moved through the day like a zombie, with none of her usual energy. Axel’s birthday had always been hard. Last year she had snapped and gotten into a physical fight with one of her cellmates, resulting in two weeks of solitary confinement. This year didn’t look to be much better. She snapped at Rio after lunch, and when Tokyo came to his defense, Nairobi lost her temper with her, too. Berlin was the one who pulled her back, and the feeling of his hands around her waist was doing nothing to help her mood. 

Realizing that she needed to cool down, Nairobi abruptly pulled away from Berlin and told the others she was going to go for a walk. She left the table they’d been clearing, and walked down the path that led away from the house. 

The house was situated on large hunting grounds, surrounded by acres and acres of countryside and trees. Nairobi wandered down the path until she came to the small pond that she knew was towards the edge of the property. 

She lay down in the grass next to the pond, closing her eyes and trying to shut out everything except the feeling of the sun on her face. 

This was nice, Nairobi thought. The sun was warm, the breeze was light, and birds chirped faintly in the woods. She breathed, emptying her mind. 

It was perhaps ten minutes before she heard the sound of rustling and footsteps on the path. Nairobi sighed, getting ready to tell Tokyo she just needed some space. 

But then she saw Berlin looking down at her. And she surprised herself by feeling relieved. 

“They’re worried,” he told her, though the tone of his voice suggested that he wasn’t. 

Nairobi sighed. “I’m fine.” 

“I’m well aware, Nairobi,” he said lightly. “Your period starts, when, tomorrow?” 

Nairobi glared at him, but as she counted backwards, she realized he was right. 

“Fuck you,” she said, irritably. 

Berlin just laughed, and lowered himself to the ground, laying down in the grass beside her. And for several minutes the two of them just lay there, looking up at the sky, soaking in the late summer sun. Nairobi closed her eyes again and thought about how strangely comfortable this felt. 

“You know, I never meant to hurt you,” Berlin said eventually. 

Nairobi looked at him. “I know,” she said. She did know that. Berlin was many things, but he wasn’t a sadist. He didn’t take _joy_ from others’ pain, he just…didn’t feel _anything_. 

He was still for a moment. “I know that I…forget myself sometimes,” he said, and Nairobi could tell that this admission didn’t come easily to him. “But you should know, Nairobi, that I have a lot of respect for you.” He glanced at her as he said this, and his face seemed unusually sincere. 

Nairobi nodded. She knew this too, in a way. It was apparent from the way he spoke to her without the condescension that so frequently crept into his voice when he spoke to Denver, or Tokyo, or Rio. He might toy with her behind closed doors, but when they spoke about the heist, he treated her like an equal. 

“You took it too far,” she told him, meeting his eyes. 

Berlin looked away. 

Nairobi sighed, looking at him lying next to her. She took him in – the way his eyebrows were raised, ever so slightly, as if in thought, the way his temple was flecked with barely noticeable grays, the way his eyes looked out at the world with that endearing vulnerability that he didn’t seem consciously aware of. 

She’d missed him. 

“I’ve never been very good at this,” Berlin said after a moment. 

Nairobi glanced at him. “At what?” she asked. 

Berlin frowned. “Personal relationships.” 

Nairobi looked at him curiously. “Berlin, we’re not – ” 

“I know,” he laughed. 

Nairobi was quiet. 

“You’re my colleague, Nairobi,” he reassured her. “And you’re good at what you do. That matters more to me than any of the rest of this.” 

Nairobi felt her stomach twinge. She looked at him and he met her eyes. She wanted to tell him that the rest of it meant something to her, too, but she couldn’t. They just looked at each other for several seconds. 

Then Berlin shook his head. “You have so much emotion, Nairobi,” he said, looking at her strangely, his eyes soft. “There’s all this… _fire_ and passion and pain in your eyes. It’s beautiful.” 

Nairobi snorted bitterly. “No, it’s not, it’s shit,” she said. 

Berlin didn’t say anything. They just lay there, looking up at the sky. Nairobi felt like there was an invisible current running between them, binding them together in some kind of psychic harmony. She wondered whether he felt it to, or if it was just a product of her own lovelorn imagination. 

“Can you feel love?” Nairobi asked, the question escaping her before she’d had time to reconsider asking it. It was the first truly personal question she’d asked him, and for a moment she thought he’d rebuff her, laugh her off, remind her that this was a heist and that feelings were messy and they were professionals. 

But he didn’t. To his credit, he seemed to give the question serious consideration. His face was inscrutable. 

“Yes,” he said finally. “Love is what makes life worth living, Nairobi. I don’t think I’d have stayed on this earth nearly as long as I have without it.” 

Nairobi looked at him, wondering. “Did you love your wives?” she asked him. 

“Very much,” he said simply. But then he shook his head. “But love rarely goes the way you think it will.” 

Nairobi couldn’t disagree with him there. “What happened with them?” she asked, propping herself up slightly. 

He sighed. “This may shock you, Nairobi, but I can be a bit of an asshole sometimes.” 

Nairobi snorted, falling back to the ground and laughing. 

Berlin glanced at her, then returned to her question. “It was different things with each of them,” he said eventually. “Falling in love, now that’s a dance I understand. You meet a perfect, beautiful angel, someone who makes you want to move the world for them, someone who makes you believe that this time is different.” He shook his head bitterly. “But then after love, you reach the messy part, with…all those _feelings_ and expectations and disappointments.” 

Nairobi laughed in spite of herself. “Some people would say that messy part with the feelings _is_ real love,” she pointed out, her lips twitching. 

Berlin looked at her. “Have you experienced real love, then, Nairobi?” he asked. 

Nairobi shifted uncomfortably, her mind running through all her past exes and flings. “I don’t know,” she said honestly. “None that lasted, obviously. But it always felt that way at the beginning.” 

Berlin laughed ruefully. “It always does, though, doesn’t it?” 

Nairobi sighed, looking up at the sky. “Maybe neither of us are very good at this.” 

They again fell into companionable silence. Nairobi ran a hand through her hair, then placed her hand under her neck as she looked up at the sky. She took a deep breath in, a breath filled with the scent of grass and earth and nature. 

“You know, I was married too,” Nairobi told him finally, deciding that if he could open up about his bad experiences with love, she could as well. “Just once, though,” she added. 

He looked at her, but if he was surprised, he didn’t show it. “Your child’s father?” he asked, for the first time acknowledging that he’d noticed the scar. 

Nairobi nodded. “He was a piece of shit,” she said bitterly, remembering the four years she’d spent married. “My mother pushed me into it. I was still practically a kid, but with Gypsies, that’s how it is.” 

He looked at her intently. It was strange, sharing this kind of personal information with him. It make Nairobi feel oddly ripped open. 

“What happened?” Berlin asked. 

Nairobi sighed, looking away. “I left him when I was three months pregnant because I realized I didn’t want my kid growing up around him. I could fight back, but a kid couldn’t.” 

They were both quiet for a moment. Nairobi could feel Berlin gazing at her, but she couldn’t bring herself to meet his eyes. 

“You’re a very strong woman, Nairobi,” Berlin said. 

Nairobi rolled her eyes. 

“I mean that,” he said. 

Nairobi didn’t respond. She didn’t like talking about her ex-husband. There were too many bad memories there. The only good thing to come out of that relationship had been Axel. 

“And the child?” Berlin asked, as if following her train of thought. 

Nairobi sighed, her mind flickering back to the thing she’d come here to try to avoid thinking about. “He’s eight,” she said finally. “Today, actually. But they took him away from me when I went to prison. I haven’t seen him in years.” She couldn’t bring herself to tell him why they had taken Axel away from her – she couldn’t bear him knowing how she’d failed the person who mattered most to her in the world. 

“Do you have children?” she asked instead, to move the subject away from her. 

Berlin looked upwards at the sky. “I have two,” he said. “A nine-year-old daughter and a ten-month-old son.” 

Nairobi looked at him in surprise. She had assumed that he might have children – Denver had made them all laugh by telling them about how Berlin had once called babies “nuclear warheads,” and it wasn’t shocking to her that he might be the kind of man to marry a woman, knock her up, and then disappear to go rob a jewelry store. But she was still surprised to hear that one of them was an _infant_. 

“Ten months?” she repeated. 

His face hardened. “What, did you think I was too old to be fathering children?” he said, a note of mocking creeping into his voice. “Because if you did, you could have spared me having to wear all those fucking condoms.” 

Nairobi sighed. He was getting defensive. Clearly this was sensitive for him. She gave him a look, and he glanced at her, then looked away, but his face softened slightly. 

“I’m not cut out for fatherhood,” he said. “It’s far too much responsibility. Takes the fun out of life. But women, you all hear what they want to hear. You all say you want a man who is exciting and romantic, who lives life the way it ought to be lived, who will worship and adore you. But then eventually you all just want a garden flat and babies.” 

Nairobi, who was about to give up her entire life and everything she had ever known for the simple chance at having a real home of her own and getting her baby back, didn’t have a response to this. “If you’re not cut out for fatherhood, you probably should have been using more condoms all along,” was all she said. 

He laughed lightly. 

They were both quiet again. Nairobi didn’t know what the word was for this peaceful feeling she had right now, laying in the grass with Berlin. She wasn’t in love with him, obviously. He was just someone she’d spent several months sleeping with, someone who she felt an odd sort of fondness for in spite of all of his obvious flaws. She’d never get involved with Berlin in a serious way, and she strongly suspected that this feeling was mutual. They were too much for each other. It made for phenomenal sex, but they’d both been down this road enough times to know better than to think that this would actually work. Besides, he was dying. 

But still, Nairobi thought. This felt nice. 

Nairobi watched a bird flying overhead. “What do you think happens when we die?” she asked Berlin, voicing her thoughts. 

Berlin shook his head. “Life is all we have here, Nairobi,” he said. “We’re born, we live, we die; there is no greater meaning. That’s what makes life so beautiful. It’s not one stop in a long train; it’s a bright fire that burns intensely until it simply…goes out.” 

Nairobi considered this. “I don’t believe that,” she decided. 

“No?” Berlin asked. 

Nairobi shook her head. “Mm-mm.” 

He glanced at her. “What do you believe, then?” 

Nairobi looked at the sky, the clouds drifting peacefully across it. “I think we go to another place,” she said slowly. “A better place. Not necessarily heaven or hell or anything like that…I don’t know if I believe in god like how they tell you in church, you know, with the saints and the sacraments. But we’re more than just our bodies, no? So it has to go somewhere. I don’t think we just…stop.” 

Berlin nodded, squinting in the sunlight. “What do you think that place is like?” he asked her. 

Nairobi shrugged. “I don’t know. Like this, maybe.” 

He laughed. “Your idea of heaven is this house?” he asked. 

Nairobi looked at him. “Why not?” she asked seriously. “I’ve been happier here than anywhere else in my life.” It was true – Nairobi couldn’t think of a single place where she had been happier than here, at this sunny old house, with this strange little family of criminals. She’d laughed more, worried less, eaten better, dreamed bigger, and felt safer than she had in a long time. 

Berlin smiled, looking at her strangely, but didn’t respond. 

Then Nairobi turned on her side to look at him, meeting his eyes. “I missed you,” she told him honestly. 

He met her gaze but said nothing. And, strangely, Nairobi felt grateful for it. Somehow, him refusing to return her affections felt like the most thoughtful and sincere thing he’d done. 

So she leaned over, and she kissed him. 

Berlin sat up and pulled her into his lap, so that she was straddling him. He pulled her in towards him, his hands wrapping around her and gently tangling in her hair. The kiss was slow, soft, like they were both savoring it. Their lips moved against each other’s gently, their mouths opening up to each other’s, kissing as if trying to convey the feelings that words didn’t seem to exist for. 

Nairobi paused, pressing her forehead against his and breathing him in, that musky smell she’d missed so much. 

“I need you,” she whispered. 

His grip tightened around her. 

They kissed again, faster this time, as Nairobi rocked into him, tugging at his tie and unbuttoning the collar of his shirt so that she could feel his skin under her hands. She unfastened his trousers and he tugged at her thin cotton shorts, pulling them down over her ass. 

“I don’t have a condom,” he murmured. 

“It’s okay,” Nairobi breathed, thankful that it was the very end of her cycle. 

They kissed again, and Berlin rolled them over so that he was hovering over her. Nairobi grabbed his loosened tie, still dangling around his neck, and pulled him towards her. He kissed her again, and brought a hand between her legs, stoking her slowly as their mouths entwined. 

Nairobi moaned softly at his touch. He knew exactly the right pace, exactly the right place to touch, exactly how much pressure to apply. She was coming undone quickly, her body lighting up as he worked her deftly, his fingers rubbing against her with delicate precision. 

Then, just as she was about to reach her peak, he pushed into her. 

“Oh,” Nairobi whimpered softly, closing her eyes tightly. Her body tensed as pleasure overtook her. The sudden pressure did what his fingers had been about to do – Nairobi’s body spasmed as she instantly came hard, gasping. 

Then her head fell back into the grass as he began moving inside her in earnest. 

“Fuck, Berlin,” she moaned, as the building pleasure mixed with her sensitive aftershocks. She wrapped her legs around him, rocking her body in time with his, not caring about the dirt or grass she was digging into. She let everything else in the world fade away except for the feeling of his body against hers, his lips on her neck, his movements inside her. 

That was the amazing thing about sex with Berlin. It was always so wonderfully physical. When he was inside her, they ceased being humans with complicated pasts and inconvenient feelings, and became creatures of only instinct and sensation, motivated by pleasure alone. 

As his body pushed repeatedly into hers, Nairobi reached her second climax, shaking desperately as her body surrendered, and almost exactly as it finished, Berlin let out a groan and came inside her. 

Their eyes met as they both shook, breathing heavily. And Nairobi felt something sharp in her chest. 

Then they collapsed onto the grass together, their clothing in disarray. Nairobi brought a hand to her forehead, wiping the sweat from it. 

She rolled over and curled into him, and his arms wrapped around her. Her hair was tangled and covered in bits of grass; her shirt was probably stained with dirt, and the others would certainly be wondering what had happened to them. But none of that mattered to Nairobi at the moment. 

“Berlin?” she asked, looking up at him and meeting his eyes. 

“Mm?” he responded, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. 

“Whatever this is, I don’t want to stop.” 

He kissed her wordlessly. 


	5. Chapter 5

The last month in Toledo was different from the ones that had come before it. Not exactly better or worse, just different.

Nairobi continued going to Berlin’s room in the evenings, continued wrapping herself around him, losing herself to his touch. But there was more to it now. Their sex was less frantic than it had once been, and less marked by sparring and power plays. It had become more sensual, more familiar. Not exactly tender – it retained its physicality, its rawness. But it was becoming harder and harder for Nairobi to tell herself that their relationship was truly just sex.

Berlin wasn’t helping here, either. He seemed to have more of a pep in his step now that he was getting laid again, but rather than channeling it all into cocky teasing, he was getting more reflective and, well, more _romantic._ Nairobi supposed it had something to do with his impending death.

He’d taken to drawing her. He drew the others sometimes, too – he liked to sit outside on the weekends, sketching in the light of early fall while drinking a coffee. But mostly he drew her.

“You’re difficult to capture, _mi reina_ ,” he mused one evening, as Nairobi lay draped across his bed, naked, her head propped up on one hand. His eyes trailed over her before coming back to meet hers. “It’s your eyes. I can’t do them justice.”

Nairobi smiled. She liked modeling for him. There was something very erotic about it for her. Plus it gave her a chance to mess with him by touching herself as he worked, which invariably made him toss the sketch pad aside to join her. He had a lot of half-finished sketches of her.

Then there were the gifts. As the heist neared, Berlin was leaving the house more and more often to go pick up weapons and supplies for the team. He always seemed to come back with something extra for Nairobi. One time it was flowers – “If you wanted a blow job, you could have just asked,” Nairobi had responded, rolling her eyes – another time it was a pair of delicate gold earrings that Nairobi begrudgingly loved, and a third time it was an absurd and gorgeous long red dress made of thick silk.

“Where on earth am I going to wear this, Berlin?” Nairobi asked him, holding it up against her as she took it out of the box.

“You have such a beautiful body, Nairobi,” he purred. “But you hide it under cheap garbage. In this, you will look like a _goddess_.”

Nairobi rolled her eyes. “And what, I just show up to class tomorrow in _this_? This looks like something a movie star would wear to the Oscars.”

“Why not, Nairobi?” he asked, laughing. “Never fear looking spectacular. Why do you think I dress the way I do every day? Take _pride_ in your appearance, wear beautiful clothing just for the sake of it. Things this lovely shouldn’t be hidden away in a closet for a party once a year, they should be _worn_ , they should be _seen_.”

Nairobi held the dress up to herself again and privately thought he was crazy.

But the next day, when she woke up and the sun was shining and the morning was clear and bright, and she saw Berlin through the window, already sitting outside in his smoking jacket, with a coffee and his sketch pad, she had a sudden urge to look as beautiful as the day outside did. So she pulled the long red dress over her head, carefully fastening it at the side, relishing the feel of the thick, silky fabric against her skin.

And when she stepped outside, he looked at her, and his face broke into a smile.

“You’re a vision, _mi reina_.”

But despite all the sex and the modeling and the gifts, Nairobi found herself struggling with a nagging feeling, a feeling that she tried to shut out, that this was inevitably going to end poorly. Because as much as she’d grown fond of him, Berlin was still, well – he was still Berlin. He wasn’t exactly a fuzzy teddy bear. He had a perverse sense of humor, a chilling indifference to other people’s feelings, and an ego the size of China. They were about to head into the most intense twelve days of their lives, and as much as Nairobi told herself that she had everything under control, that this wasn’t anything more than sex and companionship, sometimes when she curled into him at night it was hard not to think about how she was going to miss him after all this.

They’d never talked in detail about their plans for after the heist. Berlin had waxed poetic about his vineyard, but Nairobi assumed that the plan was more wishful thinking than anything. It would take months to purchase a vineyard and get it operating, and years to convert a harvest of grapes into a batch of wine. Berlin had neither.

Nairobi, of course, still clung to her one, focused plan – to retrieve Axel. The only people who knew about her plan were Tokyo, whom she’d told one night in confidence, and the Professor, who had already known about Axel when he recruited her. Her plan was what kept her going, kept her up late studying hostage biographies and building blueprints. She was counting down the days until she could walk out of the royal mint a half a billion euros richer and go whisk her baby away.

She never mentioned her plan to Berlin. He never asked. She supposed it was hard to care about other people’s futures when you had none.

So it wasn’t until a few days before the heist that Berlin finally raised the subject.

They were lying in bed, both sated and relaxed, sharing a cigarette between them, Nairobi’s head resting on his shoulder.

“Imagine, _mi reina_ , doing that on a warm beach underneath the setting sun,” Berlin said affectionately.

Nairobi took a slow drag. “Mm,” she responded.

He turned toward her, running a hand along her body. “That’s how I want my last time to be,” he said.

Nairobi’s eyes flickered towards his. “Doing it on the beach isn’t all it’s made out to be,” she said. “You get sand everywhere.”

Berlin laughed. “Fine, then. We’ll get a bed and put it right on the beach, so the water is lapping up against its sides.”

Nairobi was quiet, noticing his use of the word _we_. “Berlin.”

But he didn’t seem to notice her concern, and merely continued narrating his vision. “I’ll carry you out there, and we’ll make love like we’re the last two people on earth.” He grinned. “And then I can die happy, my face to the sun.”

“Berlin,” Nairobi said again. He looked at her, his eyes bright with that look he sometimes got when he was wrapped up in a grandiose fantasy. Nairobi shook her head. “I’m not going with you after this.”

His eyes flickered briefly, but then he simply leaned over her and kissed her. His hand came to her breasts, massaging them gently. “Mmm,” Nairobi hummed appreciatively, leaning into the touch. But then she caught herself. She wasn’t going to let him distract her. “Berlin, I’m serious.”

He pulled her onto him. “You’re going to make me die alone, _mi reina_?” he asked, tracing her face delicately.

“I’m not your nurse,” Nairobi said, looking away. “I have plans after this, Berlin.”

“What, the jumbo jet and the hot pilot?”

Nairobi rolled back onto the bed beside him, taking another drag of the cigarette. “I have plans.”

“I’ll go with you,” he said, unfazed, reaching for the cigarette.

Nairobi handed it to him. “No.”

He sighed, re-lighting the cigarette between his lips. “You’re very stubborn, Nairobi. It’s one of your worst qualities.”

Nairobi ignored him, turning away so that he wouldn’t see the pain she was sure must be showing in her eyes. She had a plan, and she was sticking to it. She wasn’t going to let some dying narcissist convince her that this was a love story, that they were destined for some romantic final chapter together on a tropical island somewhere. This was just sex.

 _It was just sex_ , she repeated to herself like a mantra as his arms pulled her towards him and his body curled around hers. His face tucked into her neck, kissing it gently. Nairobi leaned into him, let her body curve against his familiar shape and his arm drape around her. She sighed softly.

It was just sex.

**

The morning of the heist, they woke in the wee hours of the morning to scrub the house of DNA. Nairobi dressed in her bright red jumpsuit for the first time. Berlin greeted her in the kitchen with a coffee and a pair of latex gloves.

They spoke little. There was an air of tense anticipation hovering over all of them. The Professor was running though the day’s schedule repeatedly, checking and double-checking and triple-checking that they all knew every step of the day’s plan.

Nairobi sat next to Berlin in the van, clutching her rifle to her chest and tapping her fingers nervously against her leg. She rolled her eyes when he pulled his gun on Rio to make a point. He was going to terrify the poor kid before they even got started.

But everything went smoothly as they entered the mint. Nairobi felt a rush as they pulled out their guns in perfectly coordinated synchronicity. This was the most intense, most thrilling thing she’d ever done. It was exhilarating.

Berlin seemed to relish being in charge – he treated the hostages to multiple unnecessarily flowery speeches and walked around with a swagger that made Nairobi want to smack him upside the head. She refrained from doing so only because she sensed that while he was on this power trip, he’d take any excuse to “punish” her, and she wasn’t going to have any of that right now. If they were going to fuck in this place, it was going to be on her terms.

But right now, Nairobi needed to focus on the plan. She set up an office for herself and found the boxes in their arsenal that had her equipment – magnifying glasses, precision rulers, reference notes.

Berlin found her as she was unpacking her equipment in the office she’d chosen, meticulously unloading the cases and logging their contents against the checklist she’d prepared. His hand settled on her waist as she knelt over one of the cases.

“Nairobi,” he said. Nairobi glanced up at him.

“What, Berlin?” she asked.

He grinned at her. “I’d like a word with you in my office.”

Nairobi rolled her eyes. She stood up to face him, checking her watch. They only had forty minutes until they were due to sound the alarm and alert the police to their presence.

“We don’t have time,” she brushed him off.

He caught her waist and pulled her towards him. “I seem to recall that it only takes you a few minutes when I get it right,” he said silkily.

Nairobi gave him a look, pulling away. “Not now,” she repeated. She was too wound up, too focused.

Berlin sighed dramatically. “This can’t always be just when you want it,” he told her irritably.

Nairobi paused, feeling a light chill at his implication. “What does that mean?” she asked him.

“It means I have needs too, Nairobi,” he said.

Nairobi shook her head, feeling an uncomfortable sensation in her stomach that she decided was best ignored. Berlin wasn’t the type to force something. He was just being huffy about not getting his way.

She ignored him.

**

They started the printing presses that night, and Nairobi swore it was the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen. “This is it!” she barked into her megaphone at the hostages she’d spent months getting to know on paper and was finally managing in person. “ _Feel_ the machines, _live_ the machines – I want to see you moving with their rhythm like a dance!”

As euros started coming off the machines, Nairobi breathed in the sweet, beautiful smell of fresh money. She saw Berlin watching her from below, grinning widely, and she winked at him.

This was it. It was finally happening.

When Berlin found her again, just past midnight, Nairobi was on a money-induced high. They’d already printed 20 million euros – “We’re all officially multimillionaires,” she announced as he entered the office she’d set up for herself.

“That’s the best news I’ve heard all day,” he grinned.

He came up behind her and slid a hand around her waist. “How about that meeting in my office I mentioned earlier?”

Nairobi looked him up and down. The jumpsuit looked improbably good on him, and his Bond-style shoulder holster was helping more than it should have.

“You shouldn’t proposition women with a gun on you,” she told him, her lips twitching. “It could be taken the wrong way.”

“Mm?” he asked, pulling her towards him. “And what way is that?”

“It might seem…intimidating,” Nairobi said playfully, arching her brows.

Berlin took a step forward and Nairobi was pushed back into the desk behind her, forcing her to sit.

“Are you intimidated by me, Nairobi?” he asked softly, leaning over her.

Nairobi smiled coyly. She reached in her pocket and pulled out the pair of handcuffs she had stored in there earlier, dangling them in front of her. “Only when I can’t reach my pistol,” she said, arching a brow.

A smile crept over Berlin’s face. He took the handcuffs from her and snaked an arm around her neck, pulling her towards him and drawing her into a kiss.

Nairobi breathed him in as his body pressed against her, wrapping her hands around his neck as their lips moved together.

He paused briefly to close the shades on her office, lowering them over the red numbers she’d written on the glass walls.

Then he returned to her, slowly unzipping her jumpsuit and pulling it off her shoulders. Nairobi leaned in to kiss him again, but instead he grabbed her arms abruptly, pinning them behind her.

But then as he attempted to place her hands in the cuffs, his right hand started shaking.

Nairobi met his eyes, watching them turn quickly from glinting with excitement to dark with worry. He attempted to push past it, fiddling aggressively with the latch until Nairobi finally pulled her hands away.

“Berlin,” she said softly.

He didn’t speak, turning away from her.

“Have you taken your medicine yet since we’ve been here?” she asked him. She had unloaded it from the arsenal earlier that day and furtively stowed it away for him.

He didn’t respond.

“Berlin,” she repeated, pulling him back towards her.

He met her eyes finally, and in them she saw striking vulnerability. His eyes had a look of fear and defeat that broke her heart.

Nairobi wrapped her arms around him and pulled him into her, placing a gentle kiss on his lips, trying to convey that she understood.

“Go,” she told him. “Take your medicine. We’ll do this another time.”

Wordlessly, he nodded, and left.

**

The next day, Berlin decided to execute a hostage.

Nairobi felt herself getting a headache as she snapped at him angrily, wishing she was more surprised than she was. None of them were saints here, but there was a _plan_ , dammit, and this wasn’t part of it.

But there was nothing to do now except manage the situation. Moscow was panicking, and really, who could blame him? Nairobi’s worst nightmare had always been that she wouldn’t be able to stop Axel from growing up to be some violent thug. No one wants that for their kid.

Nairobi hastily fetched Moscow a blanket and some food and water. Then she pulled Berlin aside as Denver and Helsinki helped Moscow get from the bathroom where he had collapsed to the break room with the sofa.

He sighed. “Yes, Nairobi?”

She just shook her head, giving him a warning look.

Berlin met her gaze defiantly.

Nairobi made a noise of disgust and moved to walk away. But he caught her wrist in his.

“You know this had to happen, Nairobi,” he said, pulling her back towards him.

Nairobi attempted to pull her wrist away from him, but his grip only tightened. She glared at him.

“You really don’t know how to intimidate people without killing someone?” Nairobi shook her head. “I thought you were more of a man than that,” she said, giving him a withering look.

The stab at his masculinity worked. He tensed visibly, his eyes flashing. “This isn’t a schoolyard game,” he said, irritated. “She could have called the police. I’m not a man of empty threats, Nairobi.”

“No, apparently you’re a man who orders the murder of unarmed pregnant women,” Nairobi snapped. She pulled her wrist away from his hand and walked away. “Piece of shit,” she muttered.

As she walked away, Nairobi sighed to herself. She really did have awful taste in men.

**

Nairobi continued to give Berlin the cold shoulder for the remainder of the afternoon. He couldn’t just go around killing people and fucking up the plan and expect her to still bend over for him.

Of course, it then turned out the woman wasn’t actually dead, just wounded. This didn’t get Berlin off the hook in Nairobi’s mind, but it did help soothe her irritation. The plan was still safe, at least for now.

But really, the best balm was the money, which continued to fly off the machines. By that night, they’d printed over 200 million euros, and there was very little that could have sunk Nairobi’s spirits.

When Berlin found her in the wee hours of the morning, Nairobi was pouring over another fresh batch of euros, hot off the press, checking the ink and the offset.

“Nairobi,” he told her. “It’s supposed to be your break. Where’s Tokyo?”

Nairobi checked her watch. Shit. It was past three in the morning already.

“She came by a little while ago. I told her to rest; I have everything under control,” Nairobi said.

Berlin shook his head. “You need to sleep,” he told her.

“I’m fine,” she said, going back to the new batch of notes. She was in the zone, she didn’t want to stop.

Berlin sighed. “You’re not,” he said dully, grabbing her arm. Nairobi tried to pull away, but he just tightened his grip, pulling her out of the office. “I’ve seen you when you don’t sleep enough,” he told her. “It’s not pretty. You end up crying or snapping at everyone, and you become completely uninterested in sex. I prefer you well-rested.”

Nairobi glared at him.

“We don’t need you for the morning,” he said. “Go to my office; there’s a couch. You can have until eight.”

Nairobi sighed, running a hand through her hair. “I can’t sleep. I’m too wound up.”

Berlin looked her up and down. “Nairobi, if you need a fuck in order to sleep, just say it.”

Nairobi folded her arms.

He waited.

Nairobi looked away.

He waited.

Nairobi glared at him.

He waited.

Nairobi gave up. “Would you?” she asked in resignation.

Berlin laughed. “Have I ever turned you down, Nairobi?”

Nairobi acknowledged to herself that he hadn’t. No matter how late it was, no matter where they were, no matter what else was going on, when she had gone to him, he’d always been there.

So they went to his office, and Berlin kissed her temple and then handed her a sleeping bag and told her to lie down. Nairobi undressed, bunched up the sleeping bag, and settled on the couch, realizing as her head hit the pillow that in spite of the buzzing in her arms and legs, she was completely exhausted.

And then Berlin knelt down, hooking his arms around her thighs, and did that thing with his tongue that Nairobi swore deserved some kind of Nobel Prize. And soon her back was arching and her eyes were shutting tightly as she felt herself approaching a peak. And then, when she was nearly there, he pulled himself up, unzipped his jumpsuit, rolled on a condom, and entered her, leaning over her and gripping her hips in his hands. His movements were slow and rhythmic. Nairobi let out a stream of soft, quiet noises.

“Berlin,” she gasped softly, as he hit the right spot over and over and over.

He leaned over and kissed her collarbone gently, then sped up his pace.

“Berlin,” Nairobi moaned, louder now, as the muscles inside her clenched and her body began to shake.

He continued, persistently.

“ _Berlin,_ ” she gasped desperately as the entire world faded away and burning pleasure took over.

He came soon after her, and Nairobi sunk into the pillow, sighing gratefully.

Berlin leaned down and kissed her, gently, and as he pulled back, their eyes met.

And then it was like something inside her broke. And suddenly tears were streaming down her face.

“Berlin,” she cried tearfully, pulling him towards her.

And wordlessly, he laid down next to her on the couch, wrapping an arm around her.

“I’m here,” he said. “Go to sleep.”

Nairobi leaned into the pillow, and took his hand in hers, gripping it like some kind of lifeline. Tears were still falling silently from her eyes as she nestled into his body.

“Berlin,” Nairobi repeated in a whisper.

He kissed her neck.

Nairobi breathed in his smell, and tried to remember this feeling, the feeling of him holding her like this. Because there was no happy ending to this story. All she had was now.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is the longest and was the hardest to write. Portions of the dialogue are straight from canon, as this follows the second half of season 1 and the entirety of season 2. Apologies in advance, for everything -- I really wanted this to fit with canon, because I see their story as an untold story, not an AU. And in canon, Berlin was a real shit for much of their time in the mint. Sorry!!

Nairobi fiddled with the wire on the television. They’d unhooked it the previous night after Rio’s parents had appeared on the air. They weren’t technically supposed to be watching television in here – the Professor had said no outside news – but Nairobi was on a break, and she couldn’t contain herself anymore. She wanted to know what the world was saying about them.

She flicked the tv on and scrolled through the channels until she saw a picture of the royal mint. She grinned widely as she watched the news reel flicker by, announcing that the largest robbery of all time remained underway.

Then she saw Berlin’s face appear on the screen, a smirking mugshot in a familiar velvet blazer, along with a breaking news tag. The smile fell from her face.

Shit. They had him.

Nairobi quickly turned up the volume to hear what they were saying. A second later, her stomach curdled and the blood drained from her face as the words “human trafficking” rang in her ears.

She closed her eyes, forcing herself to breathe. Nairobi knew she had bad taste in men, but this was a new low. Her skin crawled as she looked at his photograph, still being flashed across the television.

She was going to fucking kill him.

**

“ _Andr_ _és de Fonollosa_ ,” Nairobi spat, the name feeling unfamiliar in her mouth.

He was completely still, watching the television.

“Who would have thought,” she continued bitterly, “that with your fancy taste, and that stick you always seem to have up your ass, that it turns out you like whores.”

He remained still, unresponsive, though Nairobi could see his face tensing in anger.

She felt nauseous. She felt used, dirty, humiliated. That he would let her come to him every night, wrap his arms around her and push himself inside her, all while presenting himself as some gentleman thief, talking about robbing jewelry stores and auction houses, speaking lovingly of crime as if it were a form of art, and conveniently leave out the part where he was fucking _selling women into sexual slavery._

She felt a swelling feeling of bitter rage. “Did you also taste the Bulgarian women before selling them? Eh?” she asked him, disgusted.

He didn’t respond. Nairobi didn’t know whether he was feeling shame or rage or just nothing at all, and she found herself not particularly caring, either.

But the woman on the television screen was still speaking, and it only got worse.

“ _Minors_?” Nairobi repeated, outraged, her skin crawling as she unwillingly imagined his hands, those hands that had touched her so many times, on a teenage girl.

She rounded him to face him head on.

“You’re a pig,” she told him, with as much contempt as she could muster. “Can you tell me why that girl is tied up in your office? What are you going to do with her, you scumbag?”

He still wouldn’t look at her. He was staring at the television screen, his face furrowed and inscrutable.

Nairobi flickered her attention back to the newscaster just in time to hear that on top of all of it, he had also evaded charges as a fucking informant. Nairobi laughed, because this was just too much. “And a snitch too!” she marveled, pointing tauntingly at his chest.

Slowly, he finally looked up at her, and for a moment their eyes locked. His eyes were hard, cold, as they bore into her, flashing with something that he clearly didn’t know how to process.

And then, in a single swift movement, Berlin grabbed her throat and picked her off the floor, slamming her down on the desk.

Nairobi felt her back hit the desk, felt his hands tightening around her neck. For a moment, all she felt was pure, sheer, terror. Then instinct kicked in and she punched him in the face, desperately trying to fight him off, make him release her. His nose began to bleed, but his grip didn’t relent.

Berlin simply leaned over her, menacingly, both of his hands around her throat. He squeezed tightly, cutting off her ability to breathe. Nairobi frantically clawed at his hands, but she felt herself becoming lightheaded.

“I’d never sell women, let alone be their pimp,” he breathed, hovering over her. His face was dark and his lips were curled in anger. “My moral code won’t let me. Nor will it let me rat out a colleague, even if they’re human waste.” He gave her a long look, his hands tightening around her throat. “And that has nothing to do with my taste and what I like, Nairobi.”

Nairobi felt the edges of her vision fraying as her body tensed with fear. She met his eyes. “If you say so,” she managed to croak.

He gave her one last, hard look, then released her.

Nairobi gasped, coughing, and sat up, rubbing her throat and trying to get air back into her lungs. Berlin walked across the room, not looking at her.

And Nairobi felt a terrible, terrible sinking feeling.

She’d always known this man was in him. He hadn’t exactly hidden it. He’d had rages before, rages over things as small as one of them using a toilet in the middle of the day. Hell, this wasn’t even the first time his hands had closed around her throat in anger as he tried to stave off a feeling of humiliation – the fact that last time he’d paired it with fucking her hadn’t really changed the fact that the base instinct was there. His emotions were like a switch, with only two directions. There was the way he was when he felt he had the upper hand – laughing, teasing, charming. And there was the way he was when he knew he was losing – cruel, vengeful, cold. There had never been much in between; Nairobi had known that.

She’d known that, and she’d still curled up next to him. She’d known that, and she’d still laughed with him. She’d known that, and she’d still _felt_ something with him.

But this? This crossed a line.

**

The next hour was a whirlwind of escalating tension.

Nairobi chased after Berlin, trying desperately to talk him down from this rage. He strode around, chest puffed, insistent that he had been slandered, that the news was telling lies. Nairobi didn’t believe a word of it, but she wasn’t enough of an idiot to argue with him when he was in this state. She tried to appeal to his ego, reminding him of his sense of honor and class as she begged with him to let this stupid, petty grudge over a _misplaced button_ go.

But he was on the rampage.

He wouldn’t kill Denver, she told herself. He was ruthless, but he wasn’t stupid. Killing Denver would completely ruin the plan. He wouldn’t let his anger control him like that. Right?

But as he pulled out his gun in the bathroom, she didn’t feel sure of anything.

She pulled out her own pistol, pointing it straight at his chest.

“Don’t fuck with me Berlin,” she said, her voice shaking. “This is not a Tarantino movie. Put the gun down.”

He glanced at her, briefly, clearly not threatened. He ignored her.

In the end, he didn’t kill Denver. He didn’t kill Mónica Gaztambide, either. Instead he just laughed, as if this had all been some very funny joke, twirled his gun, and walked off to take the Professor’s call, biting into an apple as if nothing had just happened.

Nairobi finally allowed herself to breathe.

**

“Aaaaand, silence!” Nairobi shouted, motioning in a broad circle and closing her hand as the gunfire ended.

The hostages stopped their screaming.

Nairobi glanced backward at Berlin, who was standing behind her in the lobby, next to Tokyo and Helsinki. As he slung his M16 back over his shoulder, he looked pleased.

They’d gone straight to Plan Valencia after Berlin’s call with the Professor, meaning they’d had yet to speak privately since the incident with the choking. Nairobi eyed him now.

“Okay, that’s good,” she said, turning back to the hostages. “Good job everyone, alright, now, go back and sit, yes?”

They dispersed, settling back down in the lobby. Nairobi then made her way over to Berlin, who was giving Rio instructions on the tampering they’d planned for the proof of life videos.

“Nairobi, work with Helsinki to get the hostages in order and set up the filming,” he said as she approached.

“I need a word with you, Berlin,” she said.

He glanced at her, meeting her eyes briefly.

“Tokyo, work with Helsinki,” he amended. “Move quickly; we won’t have long.”

As the others started rounding up hostages, he met her eyes again and raised an eyebrow.

Nairobi gave him a look. “We need to talk.”

He laughed shortly. “I really hope that’s code for sex,” he said, “But somehow I have a feeling it isn’t.”

Nairobi rolled her eyes. “You’re right about that.” Then she grabbed his sleeve and pulled him into the break room.

“What is it, Nairobi?” he asked, shaking her off him irritably.

“What the fuck was all that?” she asked him.

“Plan Valencia?” he asked, a note of mocking in his voice. “You really should have been paying more attention in class, Nairobi, we went over that one a number of times – it’s a diversion tactic –”

“You know that’s not what I mean, Berlin,” Nairobi cut him off.

He pursed his lips. Nairobi met his eyes evenly.

“You are underestimating the importance of command and control in this heist, Nairobi,” he told her. “I’m the captain here. It’s like that for a reason. We need to make quick decisions and we need to exercise our authority, or we will lose it.” He met her eyes. “I can’t have you undermining me.”

“If you don’t want me undermining you, then start sticking to the plan!” Nairobi snapped. “Executing hostages and shooting teammates is not part of the plan, Berlin!”

Berlin laughed. “Well then, I’m pleased to let you know that Denver and Señorita Gaztambide are both still alive and well, and that the plan is on track.”

Nairobi glared at him. He just smiled at her thinly, and leaned back thoughtfully on the table in the center of the room.

“Nairobi, I’m beginning to worry that our,” he paused briefly, “ _special_ relationship has made you think that you enjoy privileges in this heist,” he mused.

Nairobi took a slow breath in, trying to calm herself to keep from slapping him.

“Berlin,” she said warningly.

He sighed. “What, are you angry because I choked you?” he asked, moving towards her. He brushed her hair aside, running a hand down her neck. Nairobi felt chills go down her spine.

“Did it…hurt?” he asked her softly, breathing into her ear.

Nairobi abruptly grabbed his jumpsuit, pushing him away. “Don’t touch me, pervert,” she bristled.

Berlin stepped back, but his face changed at her words. His fists tensed and his eyes hardened.

“I see,” he said, recomposing himself, though his jaw remained tense. “You’ve chosen to believe the lies on the news despite my efforts to persuade you.”

Nairobi closed her eyes lightly. “I don’t know what I believe, Berlin,” she sighed, running a hand through her hair. “I don’t know anything about you; why shouldn’t it be true?”

“Because I’m a man of honor, Nairobi,” he said. “Have I ever treated you with anything less than respect?”

Nairobi raised an eyebrow at him. Her throat still felt tight from his hands around it.

Berlin pursed his lips again, apparently understanding her meaning. He looked away.

“I’ve never claimed to be a saint, Nairobi,” he said, after a minute. He looked back at her, meeting her eyes. “I’m a thief, yes, I have a temper, yes, and I know I have to watch that ego of mine sometimes.” He stared at her. “But I would never sell a woman. Or touch a child.”

Nairobi wanted it to be true. She desperately wanted it to be true. But wanting wasn’t enough. She’d been hurt too many times to trust blindly. So she shook her head.

“I don’t know that,” she said simply. “And even if I did believe you, I can’t just forget that you _nearly killed me_ an hour ago, Berlin.”

His eyes flashed, and Nairobi met his gaze defiantly. For a moment they just looked at each other. Nairobi waited for him to acknowledge what he’d done. But he remained still, quiet, a silent struggle plastered across his face.

“Just _apologize_!” Nairobi finally exploded. “Just say it! Just say you’re sorry! _Dammit_ , Berlin, you can’t just choke me like that; you _know_ that was over the line, you know it and I know it and I _know_ you know it, so just _say_ it!”

She searched his eyes, desperate to see the grain of regret she knew was there.

And it was there. It was a brief flicker, but it was there.

But he refused to acknowledge it. He simply tensed and met her gaze. “You know, it’s strange, Nairobi. Usually I’m very turned off by anger in a woman. Aggression really gets in the way of that femininity that can be so lovely. But with you…” his eyes trailed over her, and his face furrowed almost as if in thought. “You’re different.”

Nairobi gave up. “Sexist asshole,” she fumed, turning away from him.

He pointed at her thoughtfully. “That’s what I mean. You say things like that, and yet I still want to fuck you.”

“Is that supposed to be romantic?” Nairobi snapped.

“No,” he said, shrugging. “No, you’ve made it quite clear that that’s not what you want from me, Nairobi. It’s just puzzling, that’s all.”

Nairobi glared at him. “What does that mean, that’s not what I want from you?”

Berlin met her eyes. “You’ve been quite clear, Nairobi. Our relationship is just sex. No?”

Nairobi didn’t know what he meant by that -- _she’d_ been clear? _He’d_ been the one who had clearly felt nothing, _he’d_ been the one who had mocked her for developing feelings, _he’d_ been the one who had casually referred to her as a colleague, and nothing more.

Right?

Nairobi swallowed. Well, it didn’t matter now, anyway. Whatever they’d had was over.

_Right?_

Their eyes locked, his unanswered question still hanging in the air.

And then he was there, standing right in front of her, and their eyes connected, and the coldness was gone, gone at least for a moment, and Nairobi felt that familiar aching in her chest. Because there it was again, that confusing softness. Berlin leaned over her, his arms coming gently around her.

“Or did I misunderstand you?” he whispered.

Nairobi breathed him in slowly, not knowing how to respond, and he pushed her backwards into the wall.

Their lips met, briefly, passionately, but then, like a jolt, Nairobi pushed him away.

“Stop it,” she said, her voice shaking. They couldn’t do this anymore. Not after today.

He looked at her for a moment, intently, as if trying to decipher her. Then he pulled her towards him again, gripping her body in his hands, bringing his forehead to hers. And Nairobi was torn. She was torn between the way her heart was beating, the way she felt heat pooling between her legs, the way she wanted him – between all that, and well, everything else. The sex trafficking, if it was true. The rages. The choking. The manic, unpredictable look he got in his eyes when his pride was wounded.

Nairobi steeled herself. “Get your hands off me,” she said quietly, and to show that she was serious, she slipped her pistol out from the holster around her thigh, cocking it with a click.

He stood there for a moment, gripping her tightly, his muscles tensed. But then he exhaled slowly, and released her, stepping backwards. And there was something in his face that looked… _defeated_.

But he deserved this. Nairobi gave him a withering look. “Go find a new whore,” she said coldly. And then she turned on her heel, and left him there, staring after her.

**

Of course, she hadn’t expected him to take her parting words quite so literally.

But over the next day and a half, he seemed to get immeasurably worse.

His speeches to the hostages became colder, more dictatorial. The flowery artist looking for admiration was gone, replaced by an unhinged psychopath who seemed to crave seeing fear in others’ eyes.

Whatever it was that he was feeling, or refusing to feel, he took it out on all the others. He took it out on Nairobi, pointing a gun at her head and shouting at her about patriarchy in a way that reminded her with chilling familiarity of her ex-husband. He took it out on Tokyo, tying her up and throwing her to the police like a fucking dog. He took it out on Rio, coming an inch away from executing the poor kid like some kind of insane Vietnamese firing squad. He took it out on the hostages, tightening his control over them and dropping death threats left and right.

And then there was…whatever it was that was going on with that hostage girl.

Nairobi watched them interacting and felt something unpleasant rising in her. She knew the way Berlin swaggered around after sex, like he was some kind of king. She’d always rolled her eyes at it, found it almost entertaining. But seeing it directed at a hostage was nauseating.

She wasn’t _jealous_ , obviously. She just felt humiliated that she had thought there was something real between them. She felt humiliated that he could move on so quickly, find another girl a few hours later and probably already start looking into _her_ eyes with that softness Nairobi had once seen.

She told herself that it had to be consensual, that Berlin was too egotistic to intimidate a woman into sex. He got off on being wanted too much. The girl seemed nervous, sure, but she’d seemed nervous since the beginning. Maybe that’s just how she was.

Nairobi didn’t intervene. He wasn’t her problem anymore, she told herself. It bothered her only because the girl was a hostage. Otherwise, he’d be free to fuck whoever he wanted.

She tensed as she saw them leaving the office together, his hand on the girl’s waist. He glanced at her briefly as they walked past, and Nairobi could have sworn she saw a tiny flicker of…something. But it was gone too quickly to be sure.

She gritted her teeth and turned away.

**

Nairobi did intervene, however, when the plan started becoming derailed because of Berlin’s descent into madness. After all, she was the only one who likely understood what was actually going on. The man didn’t handle rejection well; he wasn’t in a mental state to lead a heist. So she hit him in the head and took over.

She wasn’t going to lie – it felt good.

He took it well. The bastard seemed almost happy to at least have her attention again, even if it was while he was tied up and bleeding.

“You tell me – are you with me, or against me?” she asked him, once they had bandaged his head up and confined him to her office in the factory.

He furrowed his brows. “Eeny meeny miny moe…” he began, screwing his face up as if debating.

Nairobi rolled her eyes in frustration, walking up to him and placing a foot on his chair between his spread legs. His eyes raked over her with interest.

“Well, I’m with you, Nairobi,” he said finally, meeting her eyes, and despite all his toying with her, there was something disarmingly sincere in his face. “Until death.”

His words hung in the air and Nairobi felt something twinge inside her. She decided not to dwell on it. He was just trying to make her uncomfortable, she told herself.

“I’m going to abide by your coup,” Berlin continued. Then he laughed lightly. “And I’ll even confess that I am turned on by the idea of serving a woman who is a goddess,” he added, grinning at her.

Nairobi gave him a look.

But true to his word, he respected her command. After his pot-shots about patriarchy, she’d expected a bit more of a struggle from him, but then, she supposed struggling had never really been Berlin’s style. And she knew from their nights spent together that as much as he loved being in control, he had always regarded her occasional orders with rather fond amusement.

So for the next twenty-four hours, they worked together. Nairobi wasn’t too proud to go to him with questions, to hand over the phone at the right moments. And well, it was surprisingly… _nice_. They’d always had a knack for working together, but something about operating as a duo felt oddly natural.

Not in a _romantic_ way, Nairobi told herself, as Berlin stopped by her office with a coffee and a pastry Tuesday afternoon. The coffee was warm and the pastry was fresh from another police delivery, and she bit into it gratefully, sending flakes scattering down her jumpsuit.

Berlin laughed, brushing them off her gently. “You’re a very messy eater, _mi reina_ ,” he said.

Nairobi met his eyes. He hadn’t called her that since their fight Sunday. It had only been two days, but she’d noticed.

His eyes were soft again.

Nairobi sighed.

He hadn’t been lying about the sex trafficking, it turned out – the police had. After he brought it up in the live interview, news outlets confirmed that there were no records of _Andr_ _és de Fonollosa_ being charged with human trafficking, or pimping, or trafficking minors. He hadn’t even been an informant.

Berlin was a lot of things, but he wasn’t _that_ bad.

Still, it was better to keep things professional at this point. Sure, sometimes it felt oddly comforting when he touched her arm, a soft squeeze of reassurance that she was doing a good job as leader. And sure, stripped of the responsibility of maintaining command, Berlin seemed to revert to his old self again – the rages were gone, and the teasing was back. And sure, sometimes their eyes locked and they didn’t look away, and it didn’t feel so much like sexual tension anymore, but like something…bigger. Deeper. More meaningful, somehow.

But none of that changed the fact that in a week, they’d be parting ways forever, and in a few months, he’d be dead.

No point in driving down a dead-end road, right?

_Right?_

**

In the end, though, they didn’t even get that week. With Moscow dying and the police on their tails, that night they began a desperate push to the finish line. Denver and Rio worked furiously in the tunnel while Nairobi oversaw the machines and Berlin barked orders at the hostages who were packing the bags of money.

Nairobi knew Berlin was still…well, doing whatever it was he was doing with that hostage girl. It gave her an unpleasant feeling in her stomach every time she saw him talking to her, but she tried to bury the feeling. It didn’t matter how she felt about it.

But then that night, she was approaching the women’s bathroom, bringing Denver’s hostage a fresh jumpsuit, when she overheard talking.

“Berlin disgusts me. He makes me sick,” the desperate woman’s voice floated into the hall. “And now the asshole thinks I have feelings for him, that we are living a love story. He wants me to marry him when we get out, to take care of him. He’s sick.”

Nairobi paused, stopping at the door to listen.

“And are you going to do it?” came a second woman’s voice.

“It’ll only be a year,” came the shaking response. “I don’t know, we’re going to travel the world. Living like kings. And going to fancy places, and that’s it. Thousands of people accept these proposals every day.”

“But is it worth it?”

“I’m going to keep all his money. He fucked up my life, Mónica. I take four sedatives a day just to be able to bare his presence. He raped me,” she spat, and Nairobi closed her eyes briefly. “He raped me. When he’s by my side and he can no longer move, when he has only me, I’ll tell him what a son of a bitch he is for all he’s done to me.”

Nairobi had heard enough. She entered the room quietly, handing the jumpsuit over to Mónica. She eyed the girl briefly, taking her in. But there wasn’t anything she could say, and she knew it. So she just turned and left.

The words kept replaying in her mind as the evening wore on.

On the one hand, what he was doing was sick. Whether he realized what he was doing or not – and Nairobi strongly suspected he didn’t – it was still fucked up.

On the other hand, there was a part of Nairobi that felt oddly vindicated, almost glad that whatever was going on between them _wasn’t_ a love story. That part of her wanted to shout in his face that he was being an idiot, a goddamned egotistic blind _idiot_ , that this girl didn’t want him, that he couldn’t just fill the hole in his heart with whatever pretty face walked by him, that that wasn’t how love _worked_.

He couldn’t just fucking _replace_ her.

Nairobi set her magnifying glass down and put her head in her hands, running the heels of her hands over her temples.

And here she’d just been starting to wonder if maybe she might go with him after this, after all. It’s not like she had other plans anymore. Realizing that her months of focused dedication had been for naught, that her plan to whisk her baby away had been little more than a kidnapping plan, had been the biggest blow to her in a series of large blows the past few days. Watching Berlin die wasn’t exactly her fantasy of what life as a billionaire would be like, but that bed on the beach didn’t sound so bad, really.

If he could just get his fucking head out of his ass.

Nairobi sighed and picked the magnifying glass back up. Work came first. First they all needed to get out of here alive. Then they could figure out what came next.

**

Nairobi was supervising the changing of the ink the next morning when Berlin found her. His face was solemn as he met her eyes.

“Moscow?” Nairobi asked softly, understanding.

He nodded.

They went to the lobby together, where Moscow was resting. He looked tired, tired and… _sad_. Nairobi took his hand in hers and remembered the place she’d imagined, lying in the grass in Toledo with Berlin. “You’re going to a better place,” she told him soothingly, squeezing his hand. “And one day we’ll all see you there. I promise.”

“Not for a long time, I hope,” Moscow said with a soft chuckle.

Then Denver arrived, and he held his father’s hand, and he cried. And Nairobi felt her eyes brimming with tears, too. As she watched the scene, she felt a hand come gently to her back. She glanced at Berlin briefly, standing next to her. His face was furrowed.

“We should give Denver a moment with him,” she said softly.

Berlin nodded.

They left together. Once they reached the factory again, Berlin paused. His face looked strange.

“I never know what to do in situations like that,” he admitted.

Nairobi looked at him, looked at the sad confusion in his eyes, almost like a child who didn’t quite understand his feelings. It was oddly endearing.

So she just leaned in and hugged him. He was tense at first, as if surprised. But then he seemed to sag. He leaned into her, hugging her back, letting his head bow into her shoulder.

They held the hug, lingering, neither of them in any hurry to pull away. Nairobi felt the tears returning to her own eyes, and she only gripped him harder. And for all the times they’d embraced, there was something different about this. It felt, in a strange way, like the most intimate moment they’d had.

And in spite of everything, as she held him, Nairobi couldn’t help but think: _no one should smell this good after five days without a shower_.

**

The funeral was brief – time was short. They broke through the tunnel and started moving out the money, working with desperate ferocity as the police closed in. They were all tense. Nairobi snapped continuously at the hostages, yelling at them to keep moving.

They were minutes away from a billion euros when Berlin found her and ordered her to stop the machines. Nairobi brushed him off, told him it would only be a few minutes more.

“You’re rounding up the numbers, Nairobi,” he observed. “What do you think this is? A TV game show?”

“Go pack your bags, I’ll take care of the money,” Nairobi snapped. “If I say I’m leaving with a billion, I’m leaving with a billion.”

“If I say stop, you stop!” he ordered angrily.

Nairobi gave him a dirty look.

“Do you know why I’m in charge?” Berlin continued, his voice mocking. “Because you’ve got shit for brains. You want to stay in this mousetrap to reach a billion? You know who that reminds me of?”

Nairobi eyed him, feeling anger rising in her.

He just smiled tauntingly. “Of a mother who leaved her child – a baby – to go sell pills. She gets caught and loses the child. Under my command, _those things don’t happen, Nairobi_ ,” he said firmly.

His words hit her like a punch to the stomach. Nairobi just stared at him for a moment, wanting to slap him in the face, to _hurt_ him. But sometimes the truth hurts most of all. So she went with that instead.

She watched his face harden, watched his jaw tense as she told him the truth about what the hostage girl thought of him. She didn’t care how much it hurt him. She wanted it to hurt.

He met her eyes steadily, but he was completely still.

“Torres,” he said finally, not taking his eyes off her. “Shut down the machines.”

“Señorita Nairobi?” Torres asked, looking for her to confirm the order.

Nairobi nodded, realizing that, in the end, he was right. It was time to go. “Shut down the machines, Torres,” she said, smiling at him grimly.

She then met Berlin’s eyes again. And again, she saw that strange look of defeat that seemed so unnatural on his face. He stared at her for another moment. And then he walked away.

And somehow, it felt significant.

They continued their race to the finish. The police were closing in. Nairobi shut down the machines, erased the drives, and hurried the last bags of money down the the tunnel. Helsinki was there already, preparing the tunnel defenses. "Berlin's orders," he explained. "For just in case." Nairobi nodded. They moved quickly, stacking sandbags and throwing down the last packs of money into the tunnel.

Berlin was the last to arrive, a few minutes after Tokyo and Rio had run in to let them know that the police were inside. Berlin ordered Tokyo and Rio to leave. But as they climbed down into the tunnel, he remained outside the vault.

Nairobi felt a sense of unease coming over her. She went to get him. “Berlin,” she said impatiently. “ _Vamonos._ ”

He looked at her, meeting her eyes, and gave her a brief, sad smile, and shook his head.

And Nairobi realized with a sinking feeling what he was about to do.


	7. Chapter 7

There was something bizarrely mundane about being stuck in commuter traffic leaving Madrid less than an hour after successfully pulling off the largest heist the world had ever seen.

As traffic came to a stop once again, Nairobi rolled down the window of the little blue car that the Professor had strategically parked two blocks from the hangar and lit a cigarette. Tokyo and Rio were in a second car, Denver and his hostage lover in a third. Helsinki and the Professor were driving the truck with the money.

Nairobi was alone.

The empty passenger seat was a jarring reminder of the man who should have been sitting there, passive aggressively critiquing her driving and going off on self-indulgent monologues.

Nairobi took a deep breath.

The money was good. The money was great, even. As Nairobi drove the little blue car west on the A-25, she forced herself to think about the money, and how she was going to spend it. She’d buy a mink coat, and gold rings, and leather boots. She was going to travel the world and see everything there was to see. She was going to buy her damn plane and hire a hot pilot, because what else was there left to do? She didn’t have a plan anymore. She had no idea what to do next.

Nairobi took a slow drag of her cigarette and kept driving.

It had just been sex, she reminded herself. He was a narcissist, she reminded herself. He was going to die in a few months anyway, she reminded herself.

And then she would remember the way his eyes had met hers, just before the end, conveying a sorrow and affection that seemed painfully genuine. Or the way he had curled his body around hers, holding her, kissing her neck. Or the way he had sometimes looked at her with that softness that had felt so real.

The tears started around Avila and didn’t end until she was nearly at the Portuguese border. They fell in a slow, steady stream; not the kind of harsh sobs that rack your body, but the kind of sustained, quiet sadness of a broken heart.

Nairobi wasn’t sure what the word was for whatever it was that had happened between them. All she knew was that in spite of everything, she had really cared about that bastard, and in the end, he had proven that he cared about her too. And now he was gone, and she was rich, and it all felt unbearably _hollow_.

But thankfully, by the time she met up with the others at the small fishing town on the Portuguese coast, the tears had dried up, and Nairobi was able to pull herself away from the pain and jump gleefully into Helsinki’s arms and whoop about their loot.

She shouldn’t be the one crying. After all, others had lost much more than she had.

So Nairobi forced an attitude of celebration. By the time they boarded the boat, it was past midnight, and they set sail across the Atlantic under the cover of darkness. They were all exhausted, and so when they finally reached the bunks below deck, Nairobi felt her body sag immediately into the thin mattress and her mind melt away into sleep.

By the time she woke, it was past 10 o’clock, and yet most of the others were still sleeping. Helsinki’s eyes were open, but he was still lying in bed, staring at the bunk above him. _Others had lost much more than she had_.

The Professor’s bunk was the only one that was already empty. So Nairobi got up, pulling on the big green jacket and the baseball cap the Professor had instructed her to wear in the name of staying below the radar, and went to go find him.

He was sitting in the crate room, rifling through a set of folders, organizing papers and charts.

“Do we have more class today?” Nairobi asked him, laughing slightly at how little a billion euros had changed him.

“We’re going to have to go over the survival plan,” he told her, pushing his glasses up his nose. “We all still run the risk of being caught.”

Nairobi shrugged. “Get fake documents, don’t fly commercial, don’t use anything with a GPS, don’t go back to Spain.”

He glanced at her. “That’s all true, yes, but there’s a bit more to it.”

Nairobi sat next to him on a crate at the small table he was leaning over. She watched him leafing through the papers and noticed that despite their successful exit, he seemed more tense than usual. She remembered the way he had doubled over crying when he found out that Berlin wasn’t coming through the tunnel, the way he had addressed Berlin as “Andrés” over the earpiece in their final moments.

“You knew him more than you told us,” she realized.

The Professor glanced at her. “Sorry?” he asked.

“Berlin,” Nairobi clarified. “You knew him more than you told us.”

“Oh,” he said. He looked away. “Yes.”

Nairobi waited, wondering whether he would offer more.

The Professor cleared his throat. “He was my brother,” he said, picking up another folder.

Nairobi stared at him, processing this latest piece of information. Suddenly her grief seemed petty. What was she supposed to say to him? _‘I understand your pain, because I spent four months as his fuck buddy?’_ She hadn’t even known the man’s real damn name until a few days ago.

“I’m sorry,” she said softly, because that’s the only thing she could say.

He nodded, meeting her eyes briefly. “Thank you, Ágata.” He continued rustling through papers before finally pausing, and sighing. “I don’t know if you knew this, but he was terminally ill.”

Nairobi nodded. “The inspector told us,” she said. It was true. Nairobi didn’t feel it necessary to explain that she’d known for two months already. “That doesn’t make it easier though,” she said quietly.

He nodded, slowly. “It doesn’t,” he agreed.

Nairobi saw his eyes welling with tears, and her heart went out to him. His head bent over and his face twisted in sorrow as tears began to leak out of his eyes.

Nairobi didn’t know what else to say, so she just pulled him towards her and hugged him.

He cried into her shoulder for several minutes while Nairobi just held him silently, wishing that she had someone to do the same for her.

When the tears finally stopped, Nairobi handed him some tissues and got him a glass of water, and he apologized several times.

“Don’t apologize,” Nairobi told him. “You’re entitled to grief.”

 _If only someone would say that to her_.

When he had recomposed himself, Nairobi smiled at him sadly. “Can you tell me about him?” she asked.

And slowly, the Professor nodded.

**

Nairobi never told the others about her relationship with Berlin. She couldn’t, not after everything that had happened in the Mint. She didn’t want to have to explain to Tokyo that she’d been secretly screwing the man who had thrown her to the police and nearly shot Rio. It wasn’t a good look.

Besides, it hadn’t actually ever been anything more than sex. If he’d lived, they would have parted ways anyway, most likely. He no doubt would have found some new girl in no time, some pretty islander who flirted with him because of his fancy suits. They’d have set up a bed right up on the water and fucked like they were the last two people on earth, and he’d have died facing the sun, not thinking about Nairobi at all.

So Nairobi went on with her life, and tried not to think about him.

After breaking up into two boats, she, Helsinki, Tokyo, and Rio docked in Casablanca and spent forty-eight hours blasting through euros like funny money, ignoring the Professor’s parting plea for their discretion. They went shopping at Gucci and Prada and Dior, then they went out to the city’s best nightclub and ordered the most expensive bottle service. And when a tall, tanned man asked if she wanted to go talk somewhere private, Nairobi just pulled him by the shirt back to her hotel room.

She and Helsinki bought a small jet plane and hired a pilot named Karim with perfect arms and a brilliant smile. Unfortunately, it turned out Karim played for Helsinki’s team, but Nairobi just laughed and told Helsinki to go for it. Nairobi sat in the cockpit with Karim, watching him flip switches and press buttons, and it was only a few months before she convinced him to switch places with her and let her fly. So she strapped on a pair of headphones and pushed forward the throttle, and soon she felt the ground parting from under them, and she yelped in excitement.

They traveled the world together, her and Helsinki. They browsed through market stalls in Nairobi, they went surfing in Rio, they ate sushi in Tokyo, and they went hiking in Denver. They did everything, saw everything.

Helsinki fell in love four times in the nearly three years they spent traveling together. Nairobi didn’t fall in love once.

She had sex, sure; she had plenty of sex. But it never went past that. She didn’t let it.

When Nairobi laid in bed at night, sometimes her thoughts still wandered to Berlin. But she always pushed the thoughts away. They did nothing except make that tight, pained feeling resurface. 

Helsinki sometimes asked about her past relationships – Nairobi told him about her ex-husband, and about the man she’d dated for a little while when Axel was little, and about some of the more colorful flings that had happened in the intervening years. But she never mentioned Berlin.

Andrés, she supposed she should call him now.

Then one night, Nairobi and Helsinki were sitting on the edge of a jetty in Chile, watching the sun set over the Pacific ocean and drinking wine from the bottle, talking about love the way they sometimes did. His loves, as usual – Nairobi preferred dispensing romantic wisdom to receiving it. But then Helsinki looked at her curiously and asked whether she’d ever been in love. And Nairobi froze, feeling an uncomfortable feeling rising in her chest.

Because that was the word, wasn’t it?

That was the word for what she’d felt with him. That soft feeling. That feeling of weakness when you looked in another person’s eyes. That feeling of fondness that doesn’t go away even though you’ve seen them at their worst. That feeling that someone understands you. That feeling that you don’t need words to communicate with someone. That feeling of intense attraction backed by an abiding sense of mutual respect.

Nairobi swallowed.

“Once,” she said, looking away across the ocean. “But it didn’t end well.”

**

The monastery was beautiful and absurd and it made perfect sense that this had been his home. The classroom was still cluttered with books and sketch pads and art that he’d left behind. Nairobi rifled through the sketches one afternoon, while the others were preparing lunch, curious as to what she’d find.

She pulled open a sketchbook, seeing the familiar lines and curves. It was a woman, one with soft hair and merry eyes. Nairobi traced the outlines, wondering who she had been, wondering how often he had drawn her, wondering whether she’d been number four, or number five. 

“Looking for something?” a voice came from the doorway. Nairobi nearly jumped.

“There were Berlin’s, no?” she asked the man who’d entered, gesturing toward the sketch book she was holding. “He used to draw sometimes when we were in Toledo.”

“Yes, they were Berlin’s,” Palermo said, “So kindly get your hands off them. He wouldn’t have wanted you dirtying his work.”

“You speak for Berlin now?” Nairobi asked irritably, not moving.

“Here, I do,” Palermo growled, and there was something strangely bitter and possessive in his voice.

Nairobi glanced at him, and she saw a pain in his eyes that felt familiar. She gave him an unimpressed look, but she set down the sketch book and left.

She sensed that she wasn’t the only one here still carrying a torch for the monastery’s former occupant.

**

Helsinki told her she needed to open herself up to love and let go of whatever – or whoever – it was who was holding her back. Nairobi did love, though. She loved Helsinki – Helsinki with his gentleness and his patience had become more of a partner and a source of comfort to her than anyone she’d ever known. She didn’t _want_ him in that way, of course, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t love. Nairobi loved Axel – even if her baby was far away from her, even if she never saw him again in her life, she’d never, ever, stop loving him with every piece of her heart. Nairobi loved the team – they were her family. She loved Tokyo, and Denver, and poor Rio. She loved the Professor with his plan. She loved all of them.

But it took a bullet in her lung for her to finally let go of the grief and the pain and the pride and try being open to another man.

Bogotá was nothing like Berlin. He was big and gruff and didn’t suffer bullshit. But he also had a kindness in him that Nairobi wasn’t sure how she’d missed. There was a softness in his eyes that was familiar, but also different; completely its own. There was something solid about him; earthy and grounded, where Belin had been all song and air.

She felt her heart slowly starting to re-open.

And perhaps, in another world, that would have been the love story that would have defined her life.

But it was over before it even really began.

Exactly nine-hundred days after a shower of bullets hit Berlin’s chest, a single bullet hit Nairobi’s forehead. It had the same effect.

**

Nairobi opened her eyes, expecting to see the art deco ceiling of the lobby of the Bank of Spain. Instead, she saw a blue sky and fluffy white clouds.

She inhaled. The air was sweet here. The sunlight was golden. The grass was the greenest she’d ever seen. And she was wearing the dress. That beautiful, ridiculous, gorgeous dress that she had loved more than she had ever admitted to loving.

Nairobi sat up curiously, looking around her, and realized that she was at the house in Toledo.

But it wasn’t the house in Toledo, not really. Everything was sharper, clearer, somehow more beautiful. Something about the way the afternoon sunshine filtered through the trees, something about the soft breeze that drifted across the field, something about the perfect shapes of the daisies that littered the grass around her – it all felt not-quite-real, as if part of a dreamscape, or a rose-tinted memory.

And slowly, she understood.

It didn’t feel painful to realize; on the contrary, Nairobi felt more at peace than she could remember feeling in a long, long time. It was like some weight had been lifted, like she had become a version of herself unfettered by pain and loss and struggle and the demons that grew with them.

And then she saw him.

He was sitting there, at the table, wearing his smoking jacket, holding his sketch book, drinking a coffee, as if it was the most natural thing in the world. He looked over at her and their eyes connected. He smiled softly.

For a moment they both just held the gaze. And Nairobi understood, somehow, that he was sorry. That he was asking her, with his eyes, if she still cared. If she still wanted him. If, after everything they went through, and after all the years in between, there was still something there.

Nairobi felt her eyes soften, felt her face break into a smile. His smile broadened. He stood.

He approached her, holding his hand out to her, wordlessly.

Nairobi placed her hand in his, and he helped her to her feet. And then they were facing each other, standing a foot apart, just looking into each other’s eyes.

“I missed you, _mi reina_ ,” he said quietly.

Nairobi had a million questions, a million things to say to him. But only one word came to her mouth.

“Berlin,” she whispered, reaching out to him, touching his chest to make sure he was real, half expecting that her hand might go straight through him. But it didn’t. He was real, or at least, he felt real, as real as any of this was.

He was looking at her softly, intently. He was different here, Nairobi realized. Just as her pains and fears seemed to have melted away the instant she opened her eyes under this perfect blue sky, there was something different about him here as well. The hard edge was gone, the defensive ego had subsided. His face had an openness and a sincerity that she’d only ever seen brief flashes of on earth.

And then slowly, he brushed her cheek.

Nairobi brought her hand to his neck, feeling that familiar skin under his collar. It was warm; she could feel his heart beating. As she leaned in towards him, Nairobi closed her eyes and breathed him in. He smelled just like how she remembered – he smelled real and alive and human, musky and perfect.

Their foreheads met as they breathed each other’s air. Nairobi drew back briefly and looked at him, sure that her feelings were written in her eyes, and they must have been, because then he pulled her into him and kissed her.

Nairobi melted into him, and they kissed with all the passion and feeling that they had always feared during their time on earth. They kissed deeply, ardently, wrapping their arms around each other, trying to convey everything with their mouths – to convey the affection, and the passion, and the joy, and the _love_.

And when they finally parted, they looked at each other, and they laughed, and Nairobi threw her arms around him and hugged him tightly.

“I missed you, too, you asshole,” she told him, her eyes prickling with tears of joy.

He laughed fondly. “If you want to slap me, I probably deserve it,” he said as they pulled back from the hug.

Nairobi just looked at his face. At the fine lines on his forehead, the gray hairs at his temples. She traced it delicately.

“You look good,” she told him. He did. He looked… _healthy_ in a way she’d never noticed he hadn’t looked when she’d known him.

He smiled softly. “You look stunning,” he said.

They looked at each other for a moment, both smiling.

“You were right about this place,” he said finally, gesturing around them. “There’s more to this side than here, of course. Though I always guessed that this was where I’d find you. How long has it been?”

“Almost three years,” Nairobi said, still taking it all in.

He frowned. “You deserved a longer life than that.”

Nairobi shook her head, looking around her again. 

“What was it?” he asked, his eyes serious.

Nairobi sighed. “It was your plan, actually. We did the Bank of Spain.”

He tensed, closing his eyes lightly. “Gandia?” he guessed.

Nairobi nodded.

He shook his head. “I swear, I’m going to kill Sergio when he shows up here. I knew that man would cause trouble.”

Nairobi shook her head, squeezing his arm. “It doesn’t matter,” she said. “This place doesn’t seem so bad.”

“No,” he agreed, looking around at the soft landscape. “It’s quite pleasant, really. Though I must admit, sometimes I wish the weather would be terrible just for a change of pace.”

Nairobi looked around, her million questions resurfacing in her mind. “Where else can we go here?” she asked.

“Anywhere you want,” Berlin said. “Just close your eyes and imagine where you’d like to be, and when you open them, you’ll find yourself there.”

“Anywhere?” Nairobi asked.

“Anywhere,” he confirmed.

Nairobi looked around. “I’ve seen the world already,” she said. “I like it here.”

Berlin laughed. “I thought you might.”

Nairobi met his eyes. She was still marveling at him being here, standing in front of her.

“Berlin,” she said, because she needed to say it, “I don’t hate you.”

He looked at her intently. “I know,” he said, with a soft smile. He took her hands in his, folding them around hers.

And they looked at each other for several moments, their eyes soft and tender. And they didn’t need to say it. They both knew. Somehow, saying it would have felt too trivial. Words didn’t feel strong enough to capture this feeling.

Then he brushed her cheek again. “What an odd love story we have, Nairobi.”

And Nairobi laughed, because it wasn’t just odd, it was crazy, it was nonsensical, it was absolutely wild. This morning she’d been holed up inside the Bank of Spain, getting over a bullet wound and melting down the Spanish national reserve, and now she was here, in this strange place, with Berlin.

And the oddest part was that somehow this all felt completely natural and exactly right.

Nairobi looked around her, at the golden sunlight reflecting off the old stones of the country house, at the trees rustling in the light, warm breeze. She took Berlin’s hand and squeezed it.

“Welcome to eternity, _mi reina_ ,” he said.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A big thank you to everyone who has been reading this!! I've appreciated your comments along the way and hope you feel satisfied with their ending :)

**Author's Note:**

> Please let me know if you enjoy!


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